









Class. 
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The Teaching of History 



EonDon: C. J. CLAY and SONS, 

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, 

AVE MARIA LANE. 

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[All rights reserved.'] 



Essays on the 

Teaching of History 



■ By f: w. m ait land, 

H. M. GWATKIN, 
R. L. POOLE, 
W. E. HEITLAND, 
W. CUNNINGHAM, 
J. R. TANNER, 
W. H. WOODWARD, 
C. H. K. MARTEN, 
W. J. ASHLEY. 



CAMBRIDGE, at the University Press, 190 ] 



dambrfogt: 

PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY, 
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 






PREFATORY NOTE. 

THE Syndics of the University Press confided the 
oversight of this collection of Essays to Lord 
Acton and myself. An Introduction by Lord Acton 
was to have been included but his unfortunate illness 
prevented this part of the arrangement from being 
carried out. Professor Maitland, under circumstances 
which make our obligation to him the greater, has 
kindly written the Introduction. 

I may be permitted to thank the contributors for 
kindness which has made the mechanical part which 
I have performed such a pleasant one. 



W. A. J. ARCH BOLD. 



Cambridge. 
September, 1901. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Introduction ix-xx 

By F. W. Maitland, LL.D., Downing Professor of the 
Laws of England in the University of Cambridge. 

The teaching of Ecclesiastical History ... i 

By the Rev. H. M. Gwatkin, M.A., Dixie Professor of 

Ecclesiastical History in the University of Cambridge. 

The teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic . u 
By R. L. Poole, M.A., Fellow of Magdalen College and 
Reader in Diplomatic in the University of Oxford. 

The teaching of Ancient History . . . . 31 
By W. E. Heitland, M.A., Fellow of St John's College, 
Cambridge. 

The teaching of Economic History .... 40 
By the Rev. W. Cunningham, D.D., Fellow and 
Lecturer of Trinity College, Cambridge. 

The teaching of Constitutional History . . 51 
By J. R. Tanner, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of St John's 
College, Cambridge. 

The teaching of History in Schools— Aims . . 69 
By W. H. WOODWARD, Christchurch, Oxford, Principal 
of the University Training College, Liverpool. 



viii Contents. 

PAGE 

The teaching of History in Schools— Practice . 79 
By C. H. K. Marten, M.A., Balliol College, Oxford, 
Assistant Master at Eton College. 

The teaching of History in America ... 92 
By W. J. Ashley, M.A., Professor in the Faculty of 
Commerce in the University of Birmingham ; late 
Professor of Economic History in Harvard University. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The following essays were to have been ushered into the 
world by Lord Acton. That he is unable to perform for them 
this good office will be deeply regretted both by their writers 
and by their readers. Of what he would have written only this 
can be said with certainty, that it would have added greatly 
to the value of this book. Still it is not apparent that these 
essays, proceeding from men who have had much experience 
in the teaching of history, imperatively demand any intro- 
duction. A few words about a matter of which the essayists 
have not spoken nor been called upon to speak, namely, 
about the history of the teaching of history in the English 
universities, are all that seem necessary, and may be suffered 
to come from one who can look at schools of history from the 
outside. 

The tale need not be long, and indeed could not be long 
unless it became minute. The attempt to teach history, if 
thereby be meant a serious endeavour to make historical study 
one of the main studies of the universities, is very new. We 
can admit that it has attained the manly estate of one-and- 
twenty years and a little more. But not much more. Some of 
those who watched its cradle are still among us, are still active 
and still hopeful. 

The university of Oxford, it is true, came by a professorship 
or readership of ancient history in times that we may well call 

«5 



x Introduction. 

ancient, especially if we remember that only in 1898 did the 
university of Cambridge permanently acquire a similar pro- 
fessorship. But those ancient times were in some respects 
nearer our own than are some times that have intervened. The 
professorship at Oxford was established by William Camden in 
1622 at the end of a life devoted to history, and the founder 
numbered among his friends many eager and accomplished 
explorers of the past : Selden and Ussher, Spelman and 
Godwin, Savile and Cotton. Much had been done for history, 
and more especially for English history, in the age that was 
closing: an age that had opened when Matthew Parker set 
scholars to work on the history of the English church and was 
in correspondence with the Centuriators of Magdeburg. The 
political and ecclesiastical questions which had agitated man- 
kind had been such as stimulated research in unworked fields. 
Learning had been in fashion, and much sound knowledge had 
been garnered. 

For a moment it seemed probable that Cambridge would 
not long be outstripped by Oxford. One of her sons, Fulke 
Greville, Lord Brooke, who was murdered in 1628, founded or 
endeavoured to found a readership of history, which would 
have balanced Camden's foundation. He sought to obtain 
Vossius from Leyden, and obtained from Leyden Dorislaus as 
an occupant for the chair. After two or three lectures the 
lecturer was in trouble. His theme was Roman history and 
he said somewhat of the expulsion of kings : a matter of which 
it is not always safe to talk at large. That he would take part 
in trying an English king for treason he did not foresee, nor the 
vengeance that followed, nor the public funeral in Westminster 
Abbey, nor the exhumation of bones that polluted a royal 
sanctuary. What at the present moment concerns us more is 
the loss of an annuity that Lord Brooke meant, so it seems, to 
be permanent. Apparently our historians have as yet found 



Introduction. xi 

no more concrete cause to which they may assign this disaster 
than 'the iniquity of the times.' So Oxford had a professor 
of ancient history and Cambridge had none. Cambridge, how- 
ever, had for a while ' a reader of the Saxon language and of 
the history of our ancient British churches ' : two branches 
of learning which since Parker's day had been united. The 
reader was Abraham Wheelock : he also professed Arabic but 
edited ancient English laws. As reader of Saxon he was paid 
by Henry Spelman, upon whose death in troublous days (1641) 
the endowment lapsed. Opportunities had been lost. The 
age of fresh and vigorous research went by. Cambridge should 
have had an historical professorship recalling the name of 
Parker. A line of professors that began with G. J. Vossius 
would have begun famously. 

A decline of interest, or at least of academic interest, in 
history may be traced by anyone who with a list of the 
Camden professors before him seeks for their names in that 
Dictionary of National Biography which is among the best 
historical products of our own time. During the seventeenth 
century the Camden professors were men who in some way or 
another left a mark behind them. Degory Wheare, for example, 
the first of them, wrote a book on The Method and Order of 
Reading Histories : a book that can still be read and such a 
book as a professor should sometimes write. Lewis Dumoulin 
was a remarkable member of a remarkable family. ' Dodwell's 
learning was immense,' said Gibbon. Then, however, there 
was a fall. Thomas Hearne, the under librarian at Oxford, 
who was a truly zealous student, might, so he said, have filled 
the chair if he would have bowed the knee to an usurping 
dynasty. Apparently learning and loyalty were not to be 
found in combination. Late in the eighteenth century occurs 
the name of William Scott, who as Lord Stowell was to ex- 
pound law for the nations. His lectures were well attended 



xii Introduction. 

(so we are told) and were praised by those whose praise was 
worth having. His name is followed by that of Thomas 
Warton, who had already been professor of poetry. His title 
to the one chair and to the other is not to be disputed, at all 
events if history is to include the history of literature ; and the 
versatile man wrote a history of the parish of Kiddington as 
'a specimen of a history of Oxfordshire.' But we need trace 
no further the fortunes of ancient history. It might be con- 
sidered as a branch of 'the classics' or of 'humane letters,' and 
the study of it, though flagging, was likely to revive. 

We must turn to speak of a royal benefactor. George I, 
the king, whose title to the crown of Great Britain the learned 
Hearne would not acknowledge, had 'observed that no en- 
couragement or provision had been made in either of the 
universities for the study of modern history or modern 
languages.' Also he had ' seriously weighed the prejudice 
that had accrued to the said universities from this defect, 
persons of foreign nations being often employed in the 
education and tuition of youth both at home and in their 
travels.' It may well have struck His Majesty that, if it was 
a defect on his part to speak no English, it was a defect on 
the part of his ministers to speak no German. Also it may 
have struck him that a knowledge 'rerum Brunsvicensium,' 
and, to speak more generally, a knowledge of the Germanic 
Body and its none too simple history was not so common in 
England as it might reasonably be expected to be in all parts 
of His Majesty's dominions. Also it is not impossible that 
a prince of that house which had Leibnitz for its historiographer 
may have thought that such historiographers as England could 
shew hardly reached a creditable standard. So he founded 
professorships of modern history at Oxford and Cambridge 
(1724). Out of the stipends that were assigned to them the 
professors were to provide teachers of the modern languages. 



Introduction. xiii 

The university of Cambridge, if it wanted learning was not 
deficient in loyalty, and effusively thanked the occupier of the 
throne for his 'noble design,' his 'princely intentions.' The 
masters and scholars 'ventured... to join in the complaint that 
foreign tutors had so large a share in the education of our 
youth of quality both at home and in their travels.' They 
even dared to foresee a glad day when ' there should be a 
sufficient number of academical persons well versed in the 
knowledge of foreign courts and well instructed in their 
respective languages ; when a familiarity with the living 
tongues should be superadded to that of the dead ones ; 
when the solid learning of antiquity should be adorned and 
set off with a skilful habit of conversing in the languages that 
now flourish and both be accompanied with English probity ; 
when our nobility and gentry would be under no temptation of 
sending for persons from foreign countries to be entrusted with 
the education of their children ; and when the appearance of 
an English gentleman in the courts of Europe with a governor 
of his own nation would not be so rare and uncommon as it 
theretofore had been.' 

Such were the phrases with which these representatives of 
English learning welcomed the royal gift. This we know ; for if 
the university of Cambridge was slow to produce a school of 
history, the borough of Cambridge once had for its town clerk 
a compiler of admirable annals. The foreigner, we observe, 
was to be driven from the educational market, and the English 
gentleman was to appear in foreign courts with a ' governor ' of 
his own nation : in other words the professor of modern history 
was to be the trainer of bear-leaders : the English leaders of 
English bears. This being the ideal, it is not perhaps sur- 
prising that the man who at that time was doing the best work 
that was being done in England as a systematic narrator of 
very modern history was the Frenchman Abel Boyer, or that 



xiv Introduction. 

he should have belonged to the hateful race of foreign tutors. 
The remoter history of England might be read in the pages of 
M. de Rapin, or, if 'familiarity with the living tongues' would 
not extend so far, then in the translation which Mr Tindal was 
about to publish. In academic eyes modern history was to be 
an ornamental fringe around ' the solid learning of antiquity.' 
As to the wretched middle ages, they, it was well understood, 
had been turned over to ' men of a low, unpolite genius fit 
only for the rough and barbarick part of learning.' One of 
these mere antiquaries had lately written a History of the 
Exchequer which has worn better than most books of its time. 
Also he had written this sentence : ' In truth, writing of history 
is in some sort a religious act.' But the spirit which animated 
Thomas Madox was not at home in academic circles. 

It may be that some of the regius professors ably performed 
the useful task with which they were entrusted. Statistics which 
should exhibit the nationality of the tutors who made the grand 
tour with young persons of quality would be hard to obtain, 
and no unfavourable inference should be drawn from the bare 
fact that the professor's mastery of history was seldom attested 
by any book that bore his name. Of one we may read that he 
is the anonymous author of ' The Country Parson's Advice to 
his Parishioners of the Younger Sort ' ; of another that ' he 
was killed by a fall from his horse when returning... from a 
dinner with Lord Sandwich at Hinchinbroke.' Macaulay has 
said that the author of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard was 
in many respects better qualified for the professorship than any 
man living. That may be so ; but ' the habits of the time 
made lecturing unnecessary' (so Mr Leslie Stephen has told 
us), and as a teacher of modern history Thomas Gray must be 
for us a mute, inglorious potentiality. Historical work was 
being done even at Cambridge. David Wilkins published the 
collection of English Concilia which still holds the field and 



Introduction. xv 

edited the Anglo-Saxon laws ; but he, like Wheelock, was 
professor of Arabic ; also he was a German and his name was 
not Wilkins. To find a square hole for the round man was 
apparently the fashion of the time. Conyers Middleton pro- 
fessed geology. 

If Gibbon learnt much at Oxford he was ungrateful, and 
yet he was the only member of the historical 'triumvirate' in 
whom an English university could claim anything. Modern 
history was at length earning academic honour north of the 
Tweed when Robertson reigned at Edinburgh. Hume found 
that history was more profitable than philosophy and consumed 
less time. His rival in the historical field could in the interval 
between Peregrine Pickle and Humphrey Clinker turn out 
history at the rate of a century a month; but he was another 
beggarly Scot. The demand for history was increasing; the 
notion of history was extending its bounds. Burke began a 
history of the laws of England and should have written more 
than ten pages. Anderson, another Scot, had compiled a 
solid history of British commerce. Dr Coxe of the House of 
Austria showed that the travelling tutor might become an 
industrious and agreeable historian. 

About the beginning of the nineteenth century it became 
usual to appoint to the chairs of modern history men who 
would take their duties seriously and who either had written or 
might be expected to write history of one sort or another. 
Thus Prof. William Smyth, of Cambridge, published lectures 
that were admired, and Prof. Nares, of Oxford, wrote about 
Lord Burleigh a book, which as Macaulay's readers will re- 
member, weighed sixty pounds avoirdupois. Thomas Arnold's 
name occurs in the Oxford list, and, besides all else that he 
did, he introduced the teaching of modern history into a public 
school. Nevertheless if we look back at the books that were 
being produced during the first half of the century, we must 



xvi Introduction. 

confess that a remarkably large amount of historical literature 
was coming from men who had not been educated at Oxford or 
Cambridge. One and the same college might indeed boast of 
Macaulay, Hallam, Thirlwall and Kemble. On the other side 
stand such names as those of James Mill, Grote, Palgrave, 
Lingard, Carlyle, Buckle, Napier; and we must not forget 
Sir Archibald Alison and Sharon Turner; still less such 
archivists as Petrie and the two Hardys. We cannot say 
that any organized academic opinion demanded the work that 
was done by the Record Commission, by the Rolls Series, or 
by the Historical Manuscripts Commission, or that the uni- 
versities cried aloud for the publication of State papers and 
the opening of the national archives. But some Niebuhr was 
translated and then some Ranke, and it became plain that the 
sphere of history was expanding in all directions. 

Then the great change came, soon after the middle of 
the century. The professors at the two universities were 
among the first men that would have been mentioned by any- 
one who was asked to give the names of our living historians. 
An opportunity of teaching, and of teaching seriously was being 
provided for them. Gradually the study of history became 
the avenue to an ' honours degree.' It was not among the 
first of 'the new studies' that obtained recognition at Cam- 
bridge. The moral sciences and the natural sciences took 
precedence of it. For a while the moral sciences included a 
little history (1851). Then (1858), a small place was found 
for it in the Law Tripos. Then for a few years there was a 
Law and History Tripos (1870) in which, however, law was 
the predominant partner. The dissolution of partnership took 
effect in 1875. History was emancipated. A similar change 
had been made at Oxford some few years earlier (1872). At 
Oxford the class list of the school of Modern History has now 
become nearly if not quite the longest of the class lists. In 



Introduction. xvii 

Cambridge the competition of the natural sciences has been 
severer, but the Historical Tripos attracts a number of candi- 
dates that is no longer small, and increases. Some new profes- 
sorships have been founded. Oxford has two chairs of modern, 
one of ancient, one of ecclesiastical history, besides readerships 
and lectureships. Cambridge has had a professor of ecclesias- 
tical history since 1884, a professor of ancient history since 1898. 
Whewell, the historian of inductive science, provided ample 
encouragement for the study of international law, which is closely 
related to modern history. Scholarships in 'history, and more 
especially ecclesiastical history,' were endowed by Lightfoot, 
the historian of early Christianity. The establishment of prizes 
for historical essays began at Oxford in the middle of the 
century when the name of Thomas Arnold was thus oomme- 
morated. Other prizes came from Lord Stanhope, who in 
various ways deserved well of history, and from Lord Lothian. 
At this point also Cambridge was somewhat behindhand; but 
the names of the Prince Consort, Thirlwall, and Seeley are 
now connected with prizes. A list of successful essays shows 
that in not a few cases the offer of an honourable reward has 
turned a young man's thoughts to a field in which he has 
afterwards done excellent work. It is a cause for rejoicing 
that among the teachers of history at the universities there 
have been men so justly famous, each in his own way, as 
Stubbs, Freeman, Froude, Creighton, Hatch, and Seeley — for 
we will name none but the departed — but when all men get 
their due a large share of credit will be given to those whose 
patient and self-denying labours as tutors and lecturers have 
left them little time for the acquisition of such fame as may be 
won by great books'. 

It is, then, of a modern movement and of young schools 
that these essays speak to us : of a movement which is yet in 
progress : of schools that have hardly outlived that tentative 



xviii Introduction. 

and experimental stage through which all institutions ought to 
pass. We may wish for these schools not only the vigour but 
also the adaptability of youth. And, if it be true, as will be 
said by others, that there are many reasons why history should 
be taught, let it not be forgotten that, whether we like it or no, 
history will be written. The number of men in England who 
at the present time are writing history of some sort or another 
must indeed be very large. Very small may be the number of 
those who take the universe or universal mankind for their 
theme. Few will be those who aspire so high as the whole life 
of some one nation. But many a man is writing the history of 
his county, his parish, his college, his regiment, is endeavouring 
to tell the tale of some religious doctrine, some form of art or 
literature, some economic relationship, or some rule of law. 
Or, again, he is writing a life, or he is editing letters. Nor 
must we forget the journalists and the history, good, bad, and 
indifferent that finds a place in their articles; nor the reviewers 
of historical books, who assume to judge and therefore ought 
to know. 

All this is important work. It has to be done, and 
will be done, and it ought to be done well, conscientiously, 
circumspectly, methodically. Now it may be that no school of 
history can be sure of producing great historians ; and it may 
be that when the great historian appears he will perchance 
come out of a school of classics or mathematics, or will have 
given some years to metaphysics or to physiology. But even 
for his sake we should wish that all the departmental work, if 
such we may call it, should be thoroughly well performed. 
His time should not be wasted over bad texts, ill- arranged 
material, or assertions for which no warrantor is vouched. To 
help and at any rate not to hinder him should be the hope of 
many humble labourers. 

That is not all. The huge mass of historical stuff that is 



Introduction. xix 

now-a-days flowing from the press goes to make the minds of 
its writers and of its readers, and indeed to make the mind of 
the nation. It is of some moment that mankind should believe 
what is true, and disbelieve what is false. 

To make Gibbons or Macaulays may be impossible : but it 
cannot be beyond the power of able teachers to set in the right 
path many of those who, say what we will, are going to write 
history well or are going to write it ill. Unquestionably of late 
years an improvement has taken place in England ; but still it 
is not altogether pleasant to compare English books of what 
we will again call departmental or sectional history with the 
parallel books that come to us from abroad. When the E?iglish 
Historical Review was started in 1886 — at J. R. Green's sug- 
gestion, so Creighton has told us — England in one important 
respect stood behind some small and some backward countries. 
'English historians had not yet... associated themselves in the 
establishment of any academy or other organisation, nor 
founded any journal to promote their common object' Even 
of late Dr Gross has been sending us our bibliographies from 
the other side of the Atlantic. More co-operation, more organi- 
sation, more and better criticism, more advice for beginners 
are needed. And the need if not met will increase. History 
is lengthening and widening and deepening. It is lengthening 
at both ends, for while modern states in many parts of the 
globe are making new history at a bewilderingly rapid rate, 
what used to be called ancient history is no longer by any 
means the ancientest : Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, and even 
primeval man are upon our hands. And history is widening. 
Could we neglect India, China and Japan, there would still be 
America, Australia, Africa, as well as Europe, demanding that 
their stories should be told and finding men to tell them well 
or to tell them badly. And history is deepening. We could 
not if we would be satisfied with the battles and the protocols, 



xx Introduction. 

the alliances and the intrigues. Literature and art, religion 
and law, rents and prices, creeds and superstitions have burst the 
political barrier and are no longer to be expelled. The study 
of interactions and interdependences is but just beginning, and 
no one can foresee the end. There is much to be done by 
schools of history ; there will be more to be done every year. 



THE TEACHING OF 
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, 



He that will be a teacher of Ecclesiastical History must lay 
it to heart that there is neither art nor mystery in the matter 
beyond the art and mystery of teaching History in general. 
Ecclesiastical History is not an enchanted ground where the 
laws of evidence and common sense are left behind, and 
partizanship may run riot without blame. It is simply a 
department of General History like Political or Social or 
Economic History, and differs no more from these and others 
than they do from each other. Each of them leans on the 
rest, and in its turn throws light on others. The problems of 
one are often the answers of another. They all deal with the 
same mass of material, for there is meaning for them all in 
every single fact which has ever influenced the development of 
men in political or other societies : and they all deal with it im 
the same way, obtaining their facts by the same methods of 
research, and sifting them by the same principles of criticism. 
So far they are unreservedly alike ; for the power of life divine 
which works in Ecclesiastical History works equally in the 
rest, and works in all by natural laws. The difference is only 
that each has a different thread to disentangle from the great 
coil. Thus facts which are principal to one are often minor 
matters to another. Yet be it noted that it is never safe 
entirely to ignore the smallest fact, for History in all its length 

A. I 



2 The Teaching of Ecclesiastical History. 

and all its breadth is one organic whole, and every single fact 
of the entire collection has a bearing of some sort on every 
other. 

Our chief aims in the practical teaching of History are 
three — to rouse interest, to give the guiding facts, and to teach 
the principles of research and criticism which enable men not 
only to become their own teachers, but to return and see for 
themselves how far we rightly gave them the guiding facts. 
And these three aims are in their natural order. In the case of 
children, we seek chiefly to rouse their interest, though we give 
them the simpler guiding facts, and tell them in simple cases 
where we get them and how we sift them. Our teaching must 
look forward from the first, and lay foundations for the future. 
A little further on, the stress falls chiefly on the guiding facts, 
though neither of the other aims can be neglected. At a third 
stage, even the ripest of our scholars will thank us for keeping 
up their interest and giving them fresh guiding facts, though 
our chief endeavour will be to teach them the methods qf 
criticism and research. The most advanced teaching must 
always lean on and look back to the elementary things ; and 
these must always stand out clearly from the rest, and be 
emphasized so far as may be needed to prevent our scholars 
from losing themselves in a maze of detail, 
r The teacher must therefore keep all these three aims always 
more or less in view. The characteristic difference between 
elementary and advanced teaching is not in the amount of 
detail, but in the relative prominence of these different aims. 
Advanced teaching need not always be detailed teaching. It may 
very well be a mere summary of the teacher's own results, 
which the students are to test by working out the details for 
themselves under his general guidance. Just as the teacher 
who has not learning enough spoils his outline by his imperfect 
grasp of the details underlying it, so the teacher who has more 
learning than he can manage thinks it enough to pile up details 
without bringing out clearly the important points. The one 



The Teaching of Ecclesiastical History. 3 

mistake is about as bad as the other ; and it is quite possible 
to commit both at once. 

The two chief methods of teaching are by lectures and by 
papers. Each has its own advantages. Lectures are (or ought 
to be) fresher and more interesting, and the best means of 
opening out new ideas ; while papers are better suited to follow 
them up (not at once, but after an interval) and to test and 
strengthen the student's grasp of his work. Thus (as we shall 
see more fully later on) the two methods call for somewhat 
different faculties in the teacher, so that while both methods 
ought to be used, the individual teacher may fairly lean a little 
to that for which he feels best qualified. Within certain limits, 
the work he can do best is the best work he can do for his 
pupils. 

The first thing to be done in lecturing is to get a clear plan 
for the lecture. This plan may vary greatly from lecture to 
lecture ; but it should always be carefully chosen. It must be 
simple, and it ought to give a natural arrangement of the 
matter in hand. Thus the political history of Western Europe 
for some time after the treaty of Utrecht may be gathered 
round the efforts of Spain to recover her lost possessions in 
Italy ; and the physical geography of Spain herself will map 
out well her eight hundred years of conflict with the Moors. 
But whatever the plan may be, it must be strictly carried out. 
Digressions are useful enough, and may even form the chief 
part of the lecture. But any serious digression ought to be 
planned out beforehand, and all digression must be kept firmly 
subject to the peremptory condition that there never be a 
moment's doubt where the thread of the plan is left, and where 
it is taken up again. 

The arrangement of the lecture needs care. The heads 
should stand out boldly, and there should not be too many of 
them. If more than five seem wanted, let some of them be 
grouped together. Even the subdivisions must be clear, and 
clearly distinguished from the larger headings. If only the 



4 The Teaching of Ecclesiastical History. 

arrangement is quite clear, it is none the worse for being a 
little formal. The wording, on the other hand, should be 
elastic. Critical sentences will need careful study ; but in 
general, the more freely we speak the better. Half the battle 
is to watch the class and keep in touch with it, and catch the 
inspirations of the moment without digressing at random. 

The delivery should be slow, so that students may be able 
to take down most of what is said ; and an occasional pause 
(not merely after a critical sentence) will be a help. If the voice 
is quickened, it should be an understood sign that students are 
for the moment to take nothing down. Bad lectures are more 
commonly made bad by quick speaking, want of pauses, and 
consequent overpress of details than by faulty arrangement. 
The young and zealous teacher goes too quickly, doing work 
for his class which they ought to do for themselves, and 
crowding his lectures with details better learned from books. 
The old lecturer who knows his ground and has forgotten his 
own early difficulties also goes too quickly, throwing down 
valuable hints for his best men, and leaving the rest to find 
their way as they can. I have heard of lectures where every 
word was gold-dust, which yet were largely thrown away, be- 
cause nobody could take good notes of them. Near akin to 
quick speaking is another disorderly habit. A lecturer ought 
not commonly to need a wheelbarrow for his books : and it is 
a bad sign if he goes home laden like a beast of burden. 

How about notes for the lecturer's own use ? Some speak 
without notes ; and this is an excellent plan, but only for those 
who are perfectly sure of themselves. The risk is very great 
of forgetting parts of the plan, of breaking down in trying to 
frame critical sentences, or of being tempted into imprudent 
digressions. Others write out everything, and simply read 
their notes ; and this is commonly fatal. The more our eyes 
are on the class and the less on notes the better. Lectures 
must be spoken, not read : and the power to read a manuscript 
as if it were freshly spoken is one of hard attainment. In its 



The Teaching of Ecclesiastical History. 5 

absence, nothing but rare excellence can keep a read lecture 
from becoming a soporific. The best way is to take in notes 
full enough to remind us of our plan and help us through any 
sentences that have to be worded with special care, but not full 
enough to tempt us into the fatal error of reading them. If 
these notes are carefully drawn they may with advantage be 
laid on the table for inspection as soon as the lecture is over. 
The younger students in particular will learn method from them 
in the most effective way. 

This then seems to be the ideal of a lecture : — plan clear 
and thoughtful, arrangement clear and rather formal, delivery 
clear and slow, wording clear and free, but suggestive and 
precise. Tell your class that every phrase and every turn 
of a phrase is there for a purpose ; and invite them to take it 
to pieces, and see with their own eyes and not with yours that 
things are well and truly stated. I am satisfied that a lecture 
which fairly aims at this ideal will be almost equally useful to 
students who differ widely in attainment. The weakest abso- 
lutely need the clear plan of the lecture to guide their reading, 
and will get strong encouragement from every glimpse of its 
deeper meaning ; while even the strongest are always glad of a 
clean suggestive outline, full of hints for further study. 

Some will think this ideal pitched too high, at least for 
the Poll man. I have not found it so. Give him your best, 
and take extra pains to make sure that everything is quite 
clear ; but do not lecture down to him. He will often answer 
splendidly, if he is properly appealed to. Your conversation 
class at the end of the term will be a pelt of eager questions ; 
and long before the year is out you will see waves pass 
through the room like the wind over the corn — sometimes 
even the lecturer's crowning triumph, when every pen drops 
of itself in close and eager listening, as if a signal had been 
given. The teacher can commit no more crying sin than in 
thinking that inferior work is good enough for backward 
students. Said a former College tutor to me once, " You 



6 The Teaching of Ecclesiastical History. 

know you cannot do much with the Poll man. I find it as 
much as he can manage if I give him a few simple questions, 
and expect an answer in the words of the book." He was not 
famed for success in teaching the Poll man. 

We pass now from lectures to papers. Both are commonly- 
needed. Lectures are likely to evaporate if they are not 
followed up by papers ; and papers are likely to be frag- 
mentary work if no foundation has been laid for them by 
lectures. Fifteen or twenty years ago papers were very com- 
monly looked on as menial work, but I hope that idea is 
nearly dead now. In truth, the task of looking over a paper 
thoroughly is very much harder than that of giving a good 
lecture. It is not enough to score the answers overnight, and in 
the morning deliver a general harangue on all things and 
certain other things. Another plan is to look over the paper 
with each man singly, thereby securing him the overestimated 
"benefit of individual attention." But if this is not done 
perfunctorily it consumes an enormous amount of time ; and 
(what is worse) it throws away the important help which 
students can be made to give each other. There is a better 
way than this, but a much harder one. 

In my later years of private teaching the excessive number of 
lectures to which theological students were driven (often two, 
three, or even four in a morning) compelled me to do most of my 
work by papers. The plan finally hammered out was this. The 
class was six or seven. A smaller number did not give enough 
variety, and a much larger one was unwieldy. As variety was 
an object no care was taken to sort the men. Strong and 
weak sat in the same class, and with the best results. The 
weak sometimes helped and seldom hindered the strong, while 
the strong helped the weak enormously. There were three, four, 
at utmost five questions in the paper, with perhaps three or four 
more below a line. These last were quite optional, and seldom 
answered ; but a few words at the end were enough to shew 
the way of dealing with them. The questions, especially those 



The Teaching of Ecclesiastical History. 7 

above the line, were big subjects, more or less of an essay 
character, which required a fair amount of reading and con- 
siderable grasp of mind to do them really well. Easy questions 
were avoided. If anyone could not do the whole paper he had 
standing orders to bring two answers done in outline rather 
than one completely : yet if anyone pleased he was welcome 
every now and then to throw his entire strength on a single 
question, doing it much more thoroughly than usual. Then I 
took the first man's answer to the first question, and com- 
mented on it there and then, not only for his own benefit, but 
for the class ; and so on round the table, summing up myself 
at the end, and perhaps giving my own answer. After this 
the next question, beginning with another man. This is a plan 
which draws heavily on the teacher. In lecturing he has only 
to put the subject in the best way he can find : but here he 
must take it up at a moment's notice by any handle that may 
be offered him. He must see through the whole structure of 
the answer at a glance, and recognize in a moment the whole 
process by which it was put together. Then comes the criticism ; 
and this will task to the uttermost his command of the subject. 
Mere slips of grammar or fact he scores quietly: but these are 
small matters. Sometimes he reads out an extract from an 
answer, sometimes he outlines it for public benefit, sometimes 
he tells two men to read each other's papers (rather a stretch 
of authority), sometimes he invites the class to dissect some 
tempting half truth, sometimes be calls attention to some 
new view of the matter, and occasionally he puts in a quiet hit 
at some bit of petty naughtiness at the far end of the table. 
Misbehaviour of any consequence I met with less than half-a- 
dozen times in more than twenty years. 

The first advantage of this plan is that each man not only 
does the question himself but gets the salient points of half-a- 
dozen other men's answers picked out for him and discussed 
before the teacher sums up himself. True, the weaker men 
find the questions very hard, and often wholly miss the point 



8 The Teaching of Ecclesiastical History. 

of them. But they soon begin to see that if they have honestly 
done what they can, they always know enough about the 
matter to see its bearings when they are pointed out in class : 
and meanwhile their occasional successes and even half suc- 
cesses will give them courage. A man gains new confidence 
when for the first time he has done a hard question better than 
some to whom he has always looked up. But here the teacher 
needs all his gentleness. Let him above all things beware of 
impatiently brushing aside an imperfect answer as worthless. 
He must give the man credit for every touch of insight, and 
even for honest work that has turned out a failure, and then 
take it just as it stands, and gently lay open the misconception 
which has done the mischief. A very little roughness or want 
of sympathy will utterly ruin this part of the work. 

Another advantage is that men are drawn together, and 
the class becomes more or less a society for friendly study. It 
represents a German Seminar on a lower plane. Men not only 
have abundant samples of method, but get used to hearing 
subjects of their own reading discussed from all points of view. 
The beginner cannot do much more than get up what he finds 
in his book ; and from this point we must lead him on to look 
all round things, to see their connexions, to use his own judg- 
ment, and to recognize old problems under all disguises. 
Whatever questions may come before him in the Tripos he 
must know exactly the method of dealing with them. The 
flexibility of mind required to do this is even more distinctive 
of the educated man than his learning ; and I know no better 
training for it than by such papers as are here described. 

Lectures and papers must be the staple of our regular 
teaching. Essays may have to be prepared for ; but students 
who are well trained on papers will not need to devote any 
very great attention to them. On the other hand, the con- 
versation class is an occasional help of great importance. In 
this the Socratic method is a powerful weapon in skilled and 
gentle hands, especially for clearing up elementary ideas ; but 



The Teaching of Ecclesiastical History. 9 

I have never felt myself quite equal to it. I therefore did the 
clearing chiefly in the papers, and devoted the conversation 
class to humbler uses. The men were told to look up difficulties, 
bring their note-books, and ask what they liked. They generally 
managed a good bombardment of questions. There was no 
great harm if the talking was chiefly done by a few of the best 
men ; for if their questions were not quite representative, they 
were all the more useful and suggestive. They generally got 
quite as much from a conversation class as from a lecture. Nor 
is the teacher who simply stands and answers questions quite 
so passive as he seems. If he wants a particular question 
asked, he can generally force it as a conjuror forces a card, by 
properly shaping his answers. He can be active enough if he 
pleases. 

Guidance rather than teaching is needed by students of a 
riper sort, who are ready or nearly ready for original research. 
In Cambridge either the Theological or the Historical Tripos 
will now give an excellent training in historical method. A 
man who goes through either, and takes a good place in his 
Second Part, has laid a broad foundation for future work, and 
made a good start with the critical study and comparison of 
original writers. When a man has once reached this point, 
historical teaching proper falls into the background, though 
he may still want special help from the philosopher, the 
antiquarian, the palaeographer, the economist, or the teacher of 
languages. The German Seminar is in itself excellent : but 
it has never taken root in Cambridge. Only a few students 
yearly are equal to the work, and most of these either go down 
as soon as they have taken their degree, or if they stay in 
residence they are most likely reading for some other Tripos 
or competing for some University distinction, or possibly 
already preparing a dissertation, so that hardly any have leisure 
to join a Seminar. When a man is ready to undertake a 
dissertation, the only help that can be given him is some 
general information about books and original authorities, and 



io The Teaching of Ecclesiastical History. 

perhaps a kw general cautions about wider aspects of the 
subject which he may be in danger of overlooking. 

As regards the teaching of Ecclesiastical as distinct from 
that of General History, I really have nothing to say. I will 
not even put in a caution against the odium theologicum, for 
this is no special disease of Theology, but the common pest of 
all studies. Quarrelsome dogs can always get up a fight ; and 
bone for bone of contention, bimetallism is as good as tran- 
substantiation. I hear say that artists can disagree ; and I 
have seen a very pretty quarrel over the Gulf Stream. The 
only difference is that ecclesiastical language has a few 
peculiarities. 



THE TEACHING OF PALAEOGRAPHY 
AND DIPLOMATIC. 



The name Diplomatic is traced back to the illustrious 
Jean Mabillon, who in his treatise De Re Diplomatica, first 
published in 1681, laid the foundations of the science. The 
tradition which he left among his brethren of the Congregation 
of St Maur was loyally maintained by them ; and it is to two of 
his successors, Dom Toustain and Dom Tassin, that we owe 
the second great treatise on the subject, the Nouveau Traite de 
Diplomatique, which appeared in six volumes between 1750 
and 1765. Here we have Diplomatique as a substantive, and 
hence the word found its way into Germany, Italy, and 
England ;. though the modern Germans prefer to use their own 
word Urkundenlehre. Diplomatic, according to its etymology, 
is the science of documents, but Mabillon used the word in a 
broader sense, to include everything connected with the rules 
of writing as well. It was only by degrees that these rules 
were differentiated to form a separate science of Palaeography. 
The distinction may be put in this way : Diplomatic has 
nothing to do with writing in itself; Palaeography has to do 
exclusively with writing. Or again, Palaeography deals with 
the external elements of a written text ; Diplomatic, with its 
internal organism. The palaeographer studies the forms of 
written characters, the history of the alphabet, and of the 
styles of writing used in different countries and in different 



12 The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 

ages. He examines the materials on which writing is found, 
analyses the ink in which it is written, describes the miniatures 
with which a book is decorated. But it is not his part to 
interpret what is written : his function is to explain the outer 
form. Palaeography thus is concerned with a far wider field 
than Diplomatic ; it takes in all written books and documents 
in all languages and of all ages : but it does not go behind the 
writing. Diplomatic on the other hand is limited to docu- 
ments, and practically to the forms and styles of documents 
which grew up under the later Roman Empire and among 
the barbarian invaders, in a system which has continued, 
though with manifold changes, down to our own day. The 
two studies thus distinguished have a certain margin of 
common territory; and if a palaeographer in many depart- 
ments of his work can afford to dispense with Diplomatic, 
the diplomatist cannot proceed far without a knowledge of 
Palaeography. Both studies are limited, in different ways, to 
the form of a written text, and are thus excluded from the 
province of the historian, since he is occupied with its matter. 
Yet the historian has need of Diplomatic, as the primarily 
critical science, to enable him to discern between the genuine 
and the spurious, and the diplomatist on his side must consult 
the historian in order to obtain working data for many of the 
principles he has to establish. 

With Palaeography we are only here concerned in so far as 
it is connected with Diplomatic and History. Practically we 
are limited to Medieval Latin Palaeography, for the broken- 
down types of handwriting which followed the invention of 
printing are too irregular to be brought under any scientific 
definition, and the technical court-hand of our lawyers is a 
professional development — or rather an artificial perversion — 
of a known style, by the help of which it can be mastered with 
a little practice. Classical Palaeography, on which courses of 
lectures are frequently given by the Professors of Greek and 
Latin at Oxford, and for which there is a special Readership at 



The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 13 

Cambridge, lies in itself outside our range. But the lessons of 
Classical Palaeography, with which we may include that of 
Biblical manuscripts, are themselves of abundant value for the 
historical student, since they furnish him with the best equip- 
ment for the textual criticism of his authorities. For the copyist 
of historical works was liable to the same errors as one who 
transcribed other books, and the sources and modes of textual 
corruption have been the subjects of the most complete exam- 
ination in connexion with Biblical and Classical writings. 

At Oxford there has been established for many years past 
a Lectureship in Medieval Palaeography which its learned 
holder, Mr Falconer Madan, has sought to make serviceable 
' for persons studying for the Classical or Modern History 
Schools.' We may take his method as a model for such 
teaching. Unfortunately the arrangement made by the Uni- 
versity provides only for one course of lectures in each year. 
While therefore Mr Madan drew out his lectures on a scheme 
extending over three years, he had to take into consideration 
the certainty that some members of his class each year would 
be beginners. Accordingly he devised the ingenious expedient 
of sometimes breaking up his course of lectures delivered twice 
a week into two separate courses ; so that, for instance, the 
Tuesday lectures might form the continuation of the previous 
year's course, while the Thursday lectures, or a part of them, 
might form an elementary course for beginners. A full 
syllabus was printed so that students might know what was 
new and what old. Mr Madan by degrees greatly increased 
the usefulness of his teaching by the provision of thirty-six 
facsimiles of manuscripts, which are circulated among the class 
or can be purchased if desired. And thus as the collection of 
facsimiles was made more complete and representative, it 
became possible to economise time in the explanation of 
details, and to combine a permanent introductory course with 
a varying element of more advanced instruction. It will be 
well to illustrate the system both of the double and single 



14 The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 

lectures by giving the main points in Mr Madan's syllabus for 
two different years, 1891 and 1897. In the latter the refer- 
ences to the facsimiles, which occupy a prominent place in 
the original, have been omitted. 



I. 

1. The scope and use of Palaeography. 
2. The history of the Alphabet. 

3. The Genealogy of Western Handwritings. 
4. Abbreviations and Contractions. 

5. Handwritings of the British Isles to a.d. 900. 
6. Forms of Letters A — E. 

7. The Caroline Minuscule in the ninth and tenth 
centuries. 
8. Letters F— M. 

9. The eleventh century, especially in England. 
10. Letters N — R. 

1 1. Book Production in the Middle Ages. 
12. Letters S — Z, Numerals, &c. 

13. The application of Palaeography to Textual Criti- 
cism. 
14. Informal (how to collate and describe MSS.). 

II. 

1. The Alphabet. 

2. Writing in Western Europe to a.d. 800. 

3. Early writing in the British Isles. 

4. Contractions. 

5. The Continental hand in the 10th and nth centuries. 

6. The extinction of English national writing. 

7. The 1 2th century. 

8. The change to a Gothic hand. 

9. Court-hand of the 13th century. 
10. The 14th century. 



The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 1 5 

11. The 15 th century. 

12. The 15th century, continued. 

13. A 15th century Court Roll. 

14. How to describe and collate a MS. 

The student of Palaeography has the advantage of an 
admirable textbook in English in Sir Edward Maunde Thomp- 
son's Greek and Latin Palaeography (2nd edition, 1894). In 
French we may mention two treatises, the Manuel de Paleo- 
graphie by M. Prou (1890), and Elements de Paleograp hie by 
Canon Reusens (1899). It is to be regretted that no treatise 
exists on the special Palaeography of English manuscripts. 
Sir Edward Thompson's book is furnished with a good selec- 
tion of facsimiles. Most of these however are necessarily 
reduced in size, and it is desirable to have constant recourse 
to the large specimens which have been reproduced by the 
autotype process in five great volumes by the Palaeographical 
Society. Similar collections, though none on so comprehensive 
a scale, have been published in France, Germany, and Italy ; 
but the volumes of the Palaeographical Society are the most 
accessible in England. Two small collections may also be 
mentioned, which, though published primarily with a literary 
object, will be found useful by persons working at the develop- 
ment of medieval handwriting for the purposes of historical 
study. These are Professor R. Ellis's Facsimiles from Latin 
MSS. in the Bodleian Library and Professor Skeat's Twelve 
Facsimiles of Old English Manuscripts. The study of the 
subject must necessarily be carried on with the help of fac- 
similes at every stage; and these can now be produced so 
cheaply that every teacher can if he pleases form a small col- 
lection of his own in a sufficient number of copies to serve for 
study in a class. If he has these transferred to lantern slides 
he will gain a great advantage in pointing out minute details 
on the screen ; but lectures delivered in a darkened room have 
drawbacks to those who wish to take notes. 



1 6 The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic, 

It is of the first importance to learn not only how to read 
a manuscript but also how to assign its date. The two acquire- 
ments indeed are closely related ; for the reason why one reads 
a particular letter in a particular way is that it belongs to a 
particular time. The same sign means w in the Anglo Saxon 
of the tenth century, and y in the English of the thirteenth j 
the r of one age is hardly to be distinguished from the n of 
another; and so forth. But the beginner must never be 
misled into believing — what is sometimes maintained by 
persons who ought to know better — that a single letter will 
serve to date a manuscript, or that there is any absolute point 
of time before or after which a given form is impossible. He 
must learn to judge the age of a manuscript by the general 
type and character which it presents, and then test his conclu- 
sion by examining the letters in detail. But he must never 
forget that handwriting like architecture changed imperceptibly, 
under various influences and at various places. Allowance 
must also be made for the age of the individual scribe, which 
is seldom known ; since an elderly man will usually preserve 
the style of writing in which he was brought up. With practice 
the student will be able to mark the peculiarities of different 
countries. He will even discern the features of a particular 
scriptorium, as that of St Martin's at Tours in Carolingian 
times, of St Paul's Cathedral in the twelfth century, or of 
St Alban's Abbey in the thirteenth. When we come to 
manuscripts in modern languages, a knowledge of the history 
of phonetic changes and of dialects helps us to assign date and 
place ; and the Humanist movement remodels the spelling of 
Latin. But considerations such as these last are secondary. 
They must not be applied by themselves to fix the date of a 
manuscript, but only to corroborate a result arrived at on 
properly palaeographical grounds. 

Recent discoveries of papyri have added very largely to the 
materials for study, specially for that of the ancient Greek and 
Roman cursive hands. But if we are learning Palaeography 



The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. iy 

with the view of working at the sources of medieval history, we 
can leave this very intricate department of the subject almost 
altogether on one side. It will indeed help us to understand the 
origines of the National hands, as they are called, — distinguished 
by the misleading names, Visigothic, Merovingian, and Lom- 
bardic; — but hardly to interpret them. Indeed the modern 
historian only comes directly into contact with the Roman 
cursive if he has occasion to study the documents of the Exar- 
chate, and their interest is to a larger extent diplomatic than 
palaeographical. For general purposes of study it is sufficient 
to begin with the Uncial type, the Irish and English hands, 
the National hands, the Half-Uncial, and the Caroline 
Minuscule, the formed Book-hand of the later middle ages, and 
the Court-hand of charters. If our object is antiquarian, to deal 
with English local or family records, it is not a bad plan to 
begin with the beautifully clear writing which we find in the 
charters of the reign of King John, and to work downwards 
until in the fifteenth century on the one hand it breaks down 
altogether, and on the other crystallises into the highly technical 
forms of the modern Court and Chancery hands. 

For the learning of abbreviations a dictionary of some 
sort is essential. The great Lexicon Diplomaticum of Walther 
(1756) is still the most extensive work of reference. Smaller 
works are those of A. Chassant (5th edition, 1884), C. Trice 
Martin {The Record Interpreter, 1892, an enlargement of the 
appendix to his edition of Wright's Court Hand Restored), and 
A. Cappelli (Dizionario del Abbreviature, 1899). There is 
also a dictionary of abbreviations given by Sir Thomas Duffus 
Hardy in the Registrum Sacrum Palatinum, vol. iii., which is 
serviceable for English manuscripts. 

It has seemed sufficient to give a bare suggestion of hints 
and cautions, because the student of Palaeography is supplied 
with the necessary textbooks. In Diplomatic it is otherwise. 
The Englishman who wishes to learn the subject is totally 
without any methodical guide. He may read its general prin- 



1 8 The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 

ciples in the excellent Manuel de Diplomatique of the late 
M. Giry (1894) or the still more copious but as yet unfinished 
Handbuch der Urkundenlehre in Deutschland und Italien of 
Professor Bresslau (vol. i., 1889). But only in the former of 
these, and there very summarily, will he find anything about the 
special documentary forms used in England. Among English 
writers George Hickes, the Nonjuring Dean of Worcester, in his 
Linguarum Septentrionalium Thesaurus (1703— 1705), was the 
first to deal at all specially with Anglo-Saxon documents; and 
Thomas Madox in the preface to his Formulare Anglicanum 
(1702) set out very clearly the relation between the terms of 
charters and their legal import. But in the two centuries that 
have passed since Hickes and Madox little indeed has been pub- 
lished on the subject. Andrew Wright's Court- Hand Restored, 
first published in 1773 (9th Edition by Mr C. T. Martin, 1879), 
was written with a purely practical purpose, as The Students 
Assistant in reading Old Deeds, Charters, Records, etc. ; but it 
may be applied to the study of the development of the forms 
of documents as well. We have some remarks, of real value, 
though in part uncritical and erroneous, in the preface to 
Kemble's Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici (1839- 1848), 
and others by Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy in the prefaces to 
the Charter, Patent, and Close Rolls of King John (1833-1837). 
Professor Earle in his Handbook to the Land Charters and 
other Saxonic Documents (1888), has improved upon Kemble, 
and Professor Maitland, partly with the help of Brunner, has 
in a few paragraphs of his Domesday Book and Beyond (1 897) 
shed more light on the origin and meaning of the Anglo-Saxon 
diploma than anyone before him. Lastly Professor Napier 
and Mr W. H. Stevenson have furnished contributions of 
extreme value to the criticism of a small number of documents 
contained in the Crawford Collectio?i (1895). Nor should 
reference be omitted to Mr J. H. Round's many important 
detached essays and notes on Norman and Angevin documents, 
though these are not strictly diplomatic, since to Mr Round 



The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 19 

the form is only of interest in so far as it illustrates the 
matter. 

The teacher of Diplomatic has therefore, so far as England 
is concerned, to construct his science largely by himself with 
the help of the original charters still preserved. Happily these, 
for the Anglo-Saxon period, immensely surpass in number 
those of any other country for the same time, and most of 
them have been reproduced in facsimile by the Ordnance 
Survey and the Trustees of the British Museum. After the 
Norman Conquest originals exist in great plenty, and the 
official enrolments of the Exchequer and the Chancery begin 
respectively under King Henry I. and King John. It is hardly 
necessary to add that the documents preserved in transcripts of 
a somewhat or a much later date, are far more numerous than 
the originals. But the fact that so large a number of originals 
remains to us is an enormous advantage to the student; for 
Diplomatic, as we have said, is primarily a critical science, and 
to establish the rules of criticism with certainty we require 
originals as a basis. No one can be confident that a transcript 
has not been tampered with, consciously or unconsciously, in 
the very points which we need in order to ascertain whether it 
is genuine or spurious. To take a simple example, suppose 
that we find a document preserved in a transcript which 
begins Henricus rex Anglie and claims to emanate from the 
chancery of King Henry I. We know that this king was 
rex Anglorum ; the scribe is merely introducing thoughtlessly 
the later style of the Plantagenets, having probably the abbre- 
viated Angt in the original before him. No argument for or 
against its genuineness can be drawn from the fault in the title. 
But had the Anglie occurred in a professing original, it could 
be set down at once as a forgery. 

It is essential at the outset to define the limits of the 
science of Diplomatic. It deals, we have said, with docu- 
ments, but only with documents in a narrow and technical 
sense. The word document is often, and rightly, used to 

2 — 2 



20 The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 

denote anything which the historian may take as evidence. 
It may include an inscription, a coin, or a chronicle. But 
none of these is a document in the diplomatic acceptation, 
which includes only such documents as might be brought as 
evidence in a court of law; that is to say, charters, rolls, 
accounts, and the like. It is important to bear in mind the 
technical limitation of the term Diplomatic, for in consequence 
of the earlier usage of the word, as including Palaeography, it 
is common to find the expression 'diplomatic evidence' as 
a synonym for 'the evidence of manuscripts,' and a 'diplomatic 
text' for one which strictly reproduces the features of a manu- 
script. No book, as such, is a document; but many books, — 
registers, chartularies, and historical works, — contain docu- 
ments ; and when originals fail us, we have to take recourse to 
such transcripts in later collections. But it is only when we 
have originals before us that we can be absolutely safe. The 
details of style, of formulae, of modes of ratification, are apt to 
be corrupted in transcription ; and the forms of one age are 
silently, even unconsciously, exchanged for those of another. 
Our primary concern is therefore with originals. We have to 
trace their forms at different times, in different countries, in 
different chanceries; and from these to establish the criteria of 
genuineness. Forgery plays a large part in the production of 
medieval documents, and it is the business of the diplomatist 
to lay down rules for sifting out the false from the true. 

The study of originals will also save us from a pitfall in which 
until recent years scholars often stumbled. They assumed the 
rules of a given chancery to be invariably, inflexibly observed, 
and when they found any deviations from them they put down 
the document without further question as spurious or at least 
as corrupt. This method has been largely superseded through 
the work of two leading Austrian critics, Professor Julius Ficker 
and Freiherr von Sickel. The latter elaborated the principle 
of the comparison of handwriting ; and when it is once proved 
that a number of documents are written in the autograph of 



The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 2 1 

the same chancery official, their genuineness is established, no 
matter what small errors, e.g. in dating, they may present. 
The former explored the development of the single document 
in its various stages, from the petition on which it was founded, 
the draught which embodied the substance of the petition, and 
the fair copy, to the final attestation and execution of this last, 
which turned it into what we call the original. When we pass 
from the original to the transcript the investigation becomes 
more complicated. The labours of these scholars have de- 
molished many cut-and-dried theories ; but they have at the 
same time led to a good deal of hypercriticism in the hands of 
less competent students. If it is argued that a forgery is based 
upon a genuine original of somewhat different purport and 
worked up with the help of another document of the same 
time and chancery, it is clear that we have an opening for 
hypothetical theories which unless controlled with judgment 
will end in purely conjectural results. With reference to 
Sickel's method, it may be added that the comparison of hand- 
writing leads naturally to the comparison of style, and that the 
study of the technical language (dictamen) of certain types of 
documents has been employed with success for the purposes 
of criticism. 

A debateable territory between the diplomatist and the 
historian lies in the region of private letters, despatches, and 
reports. They belong mainly to the historian, and it is only 
the formal elements which concern the diplomatist. This is 
the test all through : the historical matter may be of use in 
helping the establishment of diplomatic principles, but it is not 
itself diplomatic. 

Within the strict and limited class of documents there is 
a distinction to be insisted upon, which involves a legal as well 
as a diplomatic interest. One class of documents produces 
a new state of things ; for instance, a certain deed by itself 
changes the property of a piece of land from A's hand to B's; 
it is the vehicle of the grant. Another class merely records or 



22 



The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 



notifies a state of things already existing: as when a king 
makes known to all men in his realm that he has granted 
a certain piece of land to C, Both classes serve as legal proof 
of the act done; but in the former case the act is not complete 
until the document is drawn up, in the latter the document has 
no influence on the disposition, it merely declares the fact that 
it has been made. The effective document is the diploma (or 
charta in the narrow sense); the notifying document is the 
notitia (or writ). Either of them may be in the form of a letter. 

The elements of which a document is composed are neces- 
sarily varied according to the purport of the document ; they 
are customarily varied according to the usages of different 
countries and times; and they are classified variously by almost 
every writer upon the subject. It does not really matter much 
how we construct our classification, so long as we understand 
what we mean by the terms we use, and so long as we 
remember that not all the component parts are uniformly 
found, nor always arranged in the same order. It is the 
business of the teacher of Diplomatic to draw out the differ- 
ences in detail. Here we can only give a general statement of 
the normal elements in a document. 

A document is a series of formulae built upon a definite 
system. It consists of two parts. One is the text, or body, 
which contains the substance or legal purport of the document. 
This is usually placed in the middle, between the two parts of 
the protocol, or more strictly between the protocol and the 
eschatocol. These parts are subdivided as follows : 

i. Protocol. 

i. The Invocation or Chrism (from the XP[I2T02] 

monogram which often takes its place). 
2. The Title (Superscripts), giving the name and style 
of the grantor. This is often accompanied by the 
grace or formula of devotion (Dei gratia or the 
like). 



The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 23 

3. The Address (fnscriptio), giving the name or names 

of the person or persons to whom the document is 
directed. 

4. The Greeting (Salutatid). 

ii. Text. 

1. The Proem (Arenga), stating in general terms the 

motive for the act effected or declared in the docu- 
ment. This is commonly limited to the expression 
of religious sentiments, and is herein distinguished 
from what we call a Preamble, which has more in 
common with the Narratio. 

2. The Notification (Promulgatio). 

3. The Statement of the case (Narratio). 

4. The Enacting or Operative Clause (Dispositio). 

5. The Penal Clause or Clauses (Sanctid). 

6. The Notice of Authenticate (Corroboratio). 

iii. Final Protocol or Eschatocol. 

1. The Names (Subscriptiones) or Marks (Signationes) 

of witnesses, of the grantor, and of the chancery 
official or scribe. 

2. The Date of Place. 

3. The Date of Time. 

4. The Amen or similar religious ending (including the 

Appreciatio, a prayer for the effectuating of the 
deed). 

This enumeration is not complete ; but it indicates gene- 
rally the features which may be expected to appear in a solemn 
form of diploma. It is important to notice whether the docu- 
ment has any special marks of authentication and what form of 
seal, if any, it bears. The study of Seals has indeed been 
specialised as a distinct study — Sphragistic ; — but it comes 
most conveniently under the head of Diplomatic. 

The mention of the date leads us to observe that though 



24 The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 

Chronology is of course a science by itself, yet its study is so 
essential to that of Diplomatic that (in spite of the arguments 
of certain purists) no course of instruction in this subject is 
complete which does not include a full treatment of technical 
Chronology. In History one may go very far without any more 
extensive knowledge of Chronology than that which concerns 
the date of the beginning of the year, the difference between 
Old and New Style, the dates of Easter and of some of the 
chief Holy Days. In Diplomatic, on the other hand, one can 
hardly proceed a step without requiring an exact knowledge of 
the chronological systems which prevailed in the middle ages ; 
and for this reason, that a large proportion of our documents 
are dated in an imperfect manner. Some documents indeed 
bear such scanty notes of date that no knowledge of Chronology 
by itself will help us. We have to call in the assistance of 
Palaeography and of History; and we have known the case 
of a letter in which these aids have fixed the single indication 
'Tuesday' to the definite day, 16 Dec. 1292. More com- 
monly we have to combine the historical data {e.g., the Regnal 
Years of kings) with those of Chronology; and the more thorough 
our knowledge of Chronology, the more likely we are to arrive at 
a certain conclusion in regard to imperfectly dated documents. 

The points to be specially borne in mind are (1) the days 
of the week, (2) the days of the month, (3) Holy Days, (4) the 
reckoning of years, with particular notice of the various ways of 
beginning the year. 

(1) With respect to the days of the week it is only necessary 
here to say that when specified in a document in connexion 
with some other date they often furnish an immediate guide to 
the required year. For example, if we have a document of the 
reign of King Henry IV. dated on Friday, the morrow of 
SS. Peter and Paul, we can fix it immediately to 1402. For 
Friday, 30 June, requires a Sunday Letter A, and this only 
occurred during the supposed reign in 1402. As the calendar 
year begins and ends on the same week-day, every successive 



The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 25 

year begins naturally one day later than that preceding it, so 
that, were it not for leap year, we should find the same week- 
days recurring on the same days of the month every seven 
years. The intercalated day in Leap Year 1 disturbs this regu- 
larity, so that it is impossible without calculation or a reference 
to tables to say how often in a given period of time the same 
week-days will fall on the same days of the month. If one 
uses tables it should be remembered (as is indeed obvious) 
that as the week-day goes forwards the Sunday Letter goes 
backwards. But it is very desirable to commit to memory 
some ready means of finding in a moment the day of the week 
for any given year. The simplest, though not the most 
scientific, method is that of Father Chambeau, S.J., in which 
one adds together five numbers and divides by seven ; the 
remainder giving the day of the week, Sunday being 1, Monday 
2, and so forth. The five numbers are these : 

1. The year in the century. 

2. One quarter of this, omitting fractions (to allow for 
the leap years). 

3. The month number. 

Jan. Feb. Mar. April. May. June. July. Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec. 
I44025036146 

These correspond to the Lunar Regulars, and are not hard to 
remember. In leap year, January and February 1 — 24 have 
to be diminished by 1. 

4. The day of the month. 

5. The style number. In the Julian calendar (Old Style) 
this is 18 minus the number of the century. In the Gregorian 
calendar (New Style) it is 

22 down to 1699 

21 from 1700 to 1799 

20 ,, 1800 „ 1899. 

1 Note that this day is not 29 February but the day before the 6th of 
the kalends of March, i.e. 24 February. Hence St Matthias' Day in leap 
year was kept on 25 February. 



26 The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 

To illustrate this by an example, King John was crowned 
on 27 May, 1199. We set down 







99 


















24 


(the quarter) 
















2 


(the month number) 














27 


(the day of the 


month) 












18-11 


= 7 


(the style number) 












7K59 


















22- 


—remainder 5 = 


= Thursday, 


and 


we 


know 


it 


was Ascension 


Day. 
















The process 


may 


be simplified by casting 


out 


sevens 


at 


each stage, thus : 


3 

2 


















6 



7)12 


















1- 


—remainder 5 = 


- Thursday. 











(2) The days of the month were reckoned either after the 
old Roman method by kalends, nones, and ides, or else in the 
modern way from the first onwards. But there are peculiar 
systems, that of Bologna and the Cisiojanus, which require to 
be mastered separately. 

(3) Holy Days were very commonly employed, especially 
in the later middle ages, for the dating of documents. Lists of 
Saints with their days will be found in M. Giry's Manuel de 
Diploniatique and in all the books on Chronology. It is 
important to bear in mind that the day on which a saint was 
venerated was often not the same in all countries ; and that 
when a saint had more than one day (e.g. a Translation as well 
as a Deposition) it depended upon local usage which day was 
denoted by the simple name. Movable feasts are among the 



The Teaching of PalaeograpJiy and Diplomatic. 27 

most troublesome and at the same time the most serviceable 
indications for determining dates. Their relations can be 
calculated from Easter tables; and there is a series of 35 com- 
plete calendars for all possible years given by De Morgan and 
Grotefend. 

(4) Years have been reckoned in many ways. The Romans 
dated by the consuls of the year, and when the consulate 
coalesced with the Empire by the post consulatum of the 
Emperor, which was nearly the same as a computation by 
Regnal years. In the fourth century the Indiction, a cycle of 
15 years, beginning as it seems in 297, came into use. This 
only tells us the place of a year within a given cycle of 15 ; it 
does not tell us which cycle in the series is meant. The Spanish 
Era was a reckoning of years continuously from 38 B.C., which 
remained in use in the Peninsula until the fourteenth century. 

Lastly there was the Year of our Lord, which was fixed by 
Dionysius Exiguus in the sixth century, but was not employed 
as a means of dating documents until the Venerable Bede in his 
treatise De Temporum Ratione (725) gave it the weight of his 
authority. It was not however used in the Imperial chancery 
until the ninth century, nor in the Papal until the tenth. 
While it gradually superseded all other modes of computation, 
there was nothing like agreement as to the day on which the 
year began. The year of the Incarnation might be considered 
to begin with the Annunciation (25 March) or with the Nativity 
(25 Dec); in the one case the beginning of the year was 
antedated, as compared with modern usage, by more than nine 
months, in the other by a week. The inconvenience of the 
former method must have been early felt, and it became usual 
to reckon the Annunciation from the 25th March following. 
Thus year 1000 would begin according to the style of Pisa on 
25 March, 999, according to the Imperial and Anglo-Saxon 
reckoning on 25 Dec. 999, and according to the style of 
Florence on 25 March, 1000. The Venetians again began it 
on 1 March, and the French style on Easter Day. All these 



28 The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 

diverse manners of counting years require to be carefully learnt 
not merely for different periods and countries, but even for 
different parts of the same country. It might be shewn for 
instance that the dating the year from Christmas continued at 
St Alban's long after it had been superseded in the greater 
part of England by the Florentine style. But enough has been 
said to illustrate the necessity of the study of Chronology for 
the purpose of fixing the dates of documents and criticising 
their genuineness. 

The following list of books on Chronology is limited to 
those which are of moderate compass and which will be found 
specially serviceable to English students of Diplomatic. 

Sir Harris Nicolas' Chronology of History (1833; new ed. 
1840). 

A. de Morgan's Book of Almanacs (1851). 

J. J. Bond's Handy Book of Rules and Tables for verifying 
Dates (1875 ; 4th ed. 1889), ill arranged but useful. 

H. Grotefend's Zeitrechnung des Deutschen Mittelalttrs und 
der Neuzeit (1 891-1898), and Taschenbuch der Zeitrech- 
nung u. s. w. (1898); both beautifully printed, and the 
former very comprehensive. 

F. Riihl's Chronologie des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (1897), 
a very instructive little treatise. 
But reference cannot be omitted to the classical Art de 
verifier les Dates (1750; 4th ed. in 44 volumes, 1818-1844), 
which forms the basis of most modern works — notably of L. de 
Mas Latrie's Tresor de Chronologie (1889) — and to the not less 
classical treatise of L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen 
und technischen Chronologie (1825-1826). The section on 
chronology in M. Giry's Manuel de Diplomatique is also 
scholarly and extremely clear. 

If Chronology has been discussed at a length greatly out of 
proportion to the place which it properly occupies in the study 
of Diplomatic, the writer's excuse must be that it is a subject 
which lends itself to a general treatment, whereas it would be 



The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 29 

quite impossible to give even an outline of the subject-matter of 
Diplomatic within the limits to which this chapter is confined. 

The order in which the history of the different chanceries 
should be studied is one concerning which a great variety of 
opinion is permissible. It should be remembered that Diplo- 
matic far more than Palaeography has a national connexion. 
The student of manuscripts can study the types of many coun- 
tries without leaving England ; the student of documents on 
the other hand will be thrown mainly upon native materials. 
Hence the order in which the subject is taught should with us 
be made to lead up to England. A convenient arrangement 
is to begin with Papal documents, which have the advantage 
of simplicity in their structure and at the same time of develop- 
ing the greatest possible regularity of form and diction. Next 
we may take Frankish documents, ascending to those of the 
Empire, and handing on a double succession in France and in 
Germany. Thirdly, the Anglo-Saxon diploma, which came 
straight from middle Italy, may properly be treated, and the 
varieties in its form discussed, until in the tenth century it 
encountered a rival — the writ — by which it was finally dispos- 
sessed. The eleventh century brought in continental influences 
again, so that both at the beginning and in the middle it is 
impossible to study English Diplomatic as a subject by itself. 
To enter further into the development of the different chan- 
ceries would take us beyond the limits of the present chapter. 

We conclude by stating briefly what provision is made for 
the teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. At Oxford 
both subjects have been entrusted to University Lecturers. 
At Cambridge, besides the Readership in Palaeography already 
mentioned, occasional recognition is given to both studies 
by means of the Sandars Lectureship. In London, at the 
London School of Economics and Political Science, regular 
courses are, given chiefly with a practical view to preparing 
students for work at the Public Record Office and the 
British Museum. Every German University offers lectures 



30 The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 

more or less regularly, the larger ones regularly, with more 
than one Professor or Privatdocent, both on Palaeography 
and Diplomatic; but nowhere is the entire subject so com- 
pletely organised as at Paris. At the Ecole des Chartes 
the course is one of three years. In the first year (we take the 
syllabus of 1896-7) there are lectures (1) on Palaeography, 
(2) on Romance Philology, each twice a week, (3) on Biblio- 
graphy, once a week : in the second, (1) on Diplomatic, (2) on 
the History of French Institutions, each twice a week, (3) on 
the Authorities for French History, (4) on the Management of 
Archives, each once a week: in the third, (1) on the History of 
Civil and Canon Law, twice a week, (2) on Medieval Archaeo- 
logy, (3) on the Authorities for French History, each once a 
week. By the help of this institution France has trained a body 
of expert palaeographers, diplomatic scholars, and archivists, 
unsurpassed in any other country. Yet the German and 
Austrian schools, even though occasionally discredited by the 
ill-informed excesses of their disciples, still hold the first place 
for the systematic character of their work and for the technical 
perfection of their method. 



THE TEACHING OF ANCIENT 
HISTORY. 



When we use the term 'History' we commonly use it in 
one of two meanings (i) special or concrete, as the history of 
the earth, of plants, of vertebrates, of the law of real property, 
of the English people. Here the subject-matter is in each case 
limited, as it must be in any work save a history of the uni- 
verse. In practice we limit the word to subjects directly 
connected with the political experience of the human race. 
This is an arbitrary limitation : but far more arbitrary is the 
division into periods, as Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern. The 
other meaning is when it is employed (2) to express 'historical 
study.' Here we are concerned not with matter but with 
method. The notion is quite a general one and the term is 
abstract. 

In the former sense a particular history may be learnt, 
that is, its matter may be more or less completely assimilated 
and retained. In the latter, the methods may be more or less 
thoroughly acquired as a science and practised as an art. In 
the former it is mainly the quantity, in the latter it is the 
quality, that makes the difference between one student and 
another. 

Historical study is applied Logic. Reasoning is applied 
(1) to the appraising of evidence, that is, to the extraction of 
fact, (2) to the appraising of facts, that is, to the extraction of 
their meaning. 



2,2 The Teaching of Ancient History. 

Now the further events are removed from us the harder it 
is as a rule to ascertain the truth about them. The nearer 
they are to us the harder it is as a rule to gauge their signifi- 
cance. 

It is not necessary to prove what has been called the 'unity 
of history.' The continuity of the history of mankind is not 
now questioned, and it is more and more established by the 
extension of research. We cannot ignore progress, however at 
times concealed or checked. But, since human powers are 
limited, it is usual to fix the historical eye upon a group of 
peoples in whose history progress is clearly seen. The history 
with which we habitually deal is 'European' history, the history 
of a group of progressive peoples who live or lived in or who 
came recently from Europe. Its roots reach as far as India 
and its branches are spreading over every sea. 

If this be the history with which we are dealing, and if we 
are for convenience sake to divide it into three great periods, 
it is only natural to ask what is the meaning of this division, 
so far as concerns Ancient history. Can it be to any extent 
justified on grounds other than mere convenience? Can the 
dividing line or border land be made to coincide with an 
apparent break of events, a halt and a new departure ? 

Now History shews us a period in the course of which small 
city-states, great inorganic kingdoms, rude independent tribes, 
and one national kingdom (Macedon), share one after another 
a common destiny. They become parts of an immense orga- 
nization, the Roman Empire. This is not a true organism, 
and its dissolution is gradual, a piecemeal process, the converse 
of its formation. Its Western provinces are formed into king- 
doms, the beginnings of the national states of modern times. 
Here we are in presence of a great contrast. The period in 
which the separative tendency in the empire overcomes the 
aggregative is a sort of natural borderland. 

Religion presents a not less striking contrast. The old 
religions are distinctly local, and they are the affairs of groups 



The Teaching of Ancient History. 33 

— family, clan, state, etc. They are a means of profit, of 
securing the help of the gods. The gods, great and small, 
are numberless. Modern religions are (at least potentially) 
ecumenical, and the affair of the individual. They are (at least 
in aim) a means of morality, of promoting or checking certain 
kinds of conduct. They are monotheistic. In European 
history a natural border-period may be found in the struggles 
and triumph of the Christian Church. 

Nor is it otherwise with Law. It too is an affair of groups 
and is closely connected with religion. Speaking generally, 
the ancient state of things is that those who share the same 
religion (and no others) share the same law. Nowadays this 
is out of date, at least in Christendom. Law regards indivi- 
duals, and is not mixed up with religion. Now the period in 
which it becomes clear that the individual, not the family, is 
going to be the legal unit, is fairly to be treated as a border- 
land. 

The period that meets these requirements is broadly that 
from**Hadrian to Justinian, more narrowly from Constantine to 
Justinian, beginning in fact with the failure of the machinery 
of Diocletian. Into this period students of history, mediaeval 
and ancient alike, must wander. 

Here we must ask, if we limit Ancient History in some 
such way as this, how is the teaching to be conducted ? Has 
the study of the Ancient period any special objects and 
methods of its own, primarily connected with it, if not peculiar 
to it? 

Now we know that the history of the Graeco-Roman world 
is often treated as a part of Classical studies. I have even met 
with the phrase 'Classical History.' The phrase truly indicates 
that the 'history' is a mere appendage to the study of the 
'Classical' writers. Literary considerations come first, and 
certain portions of history are forced into prominence. Such 
are the wretched Peloponnesian war down to 411 B.C. and the 
Catilinarian conspiracy. Certain other portions are skimmed 
A - 3 



34 The Teaching of A ncient History. 

or skipped, and after the death of Marcus Aurelius the business 
simply comes to an end. The history of the kingdoms formed 
out of Alexander's empire is all-important for understanding 
the connexion of Greek and Roman. But from the Classical 
point of view its interest suffers : it comes after Demosthenes 
and before Cicero. In short, the study above sketched is not 
strictly speaking historical study at all. Facts — 'Classical' 
facts— are tested and verified. This is well done. But the 
true meaning of the facts is less well grasped, for this 'history' 
lacks perspective, and affords little help towards judging the 
relative importance of events. Whence came the men who 
supplied the enormous demand for all kinds of technical skill 
created by the Roman Empire ? Mostly from the ranks of the 
'Hellenistic' Greeks. Where was the chief centre of science 
and technical skill in the 'Hellenistic' world? Alexandria. 
Who gave the impulse to this great movement? Aristotle, 
Alexander, and the early Ptolemies. But the sort of things that 
the average Classical student will tell you about Alexandria are 
the story of Caesar swimming with his notebook in one hand, 
and the amours and tragic end of Cleopatra the sixth. We 
must of course enter into the spirit of Virgil and Horace (not 
to mention others) and this we take no small pains to do : but 
for History as a connected whole, in which the effect of one or 
more causes is ever becoming a cause of new effects and so 
on, we are apt to lose both the leisure and the eye. 

In short, History must start by looking backward. From 
consideration of later ages we are enabled to form some notion 
of the relative importance of events in earlier ages. Even 
contemporary literature is but a blind guide. It does not as a 
rule give us bare facts, but merely the writer's view of those 
facts that seemed to him important. Not to discuss the ques- 
tion of personal bias, the mere omissions are enough to destroy 
perspective. Nothing is more helpful in illustrating the rela- 
tions of Athens to her allies than facts concerning the tribute. 
Yet Thucydides does not tell us of the great increase of the 



The Teaching of Ancient History. 35 

tribute in B.C. 425. The assertions of later orators were 
naturally discredited by the silence of Thucydides. But in 
recent years the fragments of an inscription 1 have been found 
to confirm their assertions. Again, there is a department, 
Constitutional History, in which the omissions are the rule 
and clear statement the exception, especially in the case of 
Rome. Take for instance the popular assemblies. The subject 
is a byword for obscurity. Nor can we be said to understand 
the assemblies of the Greek states, save perhaps the Ekklesia of 
Athens. Is there then no significant fact in relation to primary 
assemblies that History can extract from the assemblies of 
Greece and Rome? Yes, surely this much at least, that voting 
by heads and voting by groups are totally distinct methods of 
procedure and give wholly different characters to assemblies in 
which they are respectively used. The group-voting system 
plays into the hands of the Roman nobles and helps to make 
the conservative forces dominate in Roman politics. To it 
is largely due the futility of democratic movements in the last 
century of the Republic. A Demokraty in the Athenian sense 
could not exist at Rome : the assembly could only serve to 
set up a Monarch : and when the Monarch was found, the 
Monarchy soon made terms with the Senate and ignored the 
People. In so doing it became permanent. Now this group 
system is an historical fact of great and manifest importance : 
it not only influences the destinies of the Roman common- 
wealth, but it is clearly the outcome of immemorial tendencies 
and has its roots in the social and political conditions of 
ancient Italy. 

Thus, though Ancient History must and does suffer from 
the lamentable incompleteness of the record, there is no lack 
of significant facts on which a cautious teacher may insist. 
But he must always be looking backward as well as forward, 
in fact, going forward in order to look backward. In early 

1 See note in Mr Hicks' Manual oi Greek historical inscriptions, No. 47. 

3-2 



36 The Teaching of Ancient History. 

times he is often largely dependent on the help of archaeology 
and comparative philology and mythology. Studies of ancient 
law and custom have been even more fruitful. The 'method 
of survivals' has in judicious hands been a means of suggestion 
and correction. On the other hand the bulk of documentary 
evidence is, as compared with that of the later periods, un- 
avoidably small. But in no department of his subject does he 
find the path more beset with pitfalls than in the critical use of 
literary testimony. A striking instance of this is the unflagging 
controversy that still rages over the public careers of Demo- 
sthenes and Cicero. To turn to that central figure in the 
literature of ancient history, Polybius. His varied and practical 
experience of public affairs, his Greek and Roman connexions, 
his wide and philosophic views of history, all render him a 
writer of first-rate importance. Yet his opinions are sometimes 
grievously narrow and one-sided. He judges Demosthenes by 
an unfair standard, and his views of former Greek politics are 
coloured by Achaean jealousy of the Sparta of a later day. 
At the same time he misreads the working of the Roman 
constitution and needs himself the excuse of what I may call 
contemporary blindness, the very justice that he refuses to 
Demosthenes. We are perhaps in less danger of being misled 
by the Roman writers. Their bias is as a rule too manifest. 
Livy is preoccupied with the glory of Rome, Tacitus sees the 
Empire through Senatorial glasses. We are perhaps even 
tempted now and then to discount their utterances too freely. 
But, of all ancient historians, the one on whom it is hardest 
to exercise a sound judgment is Thucydides. His weighty 
seriousness (not to mention other qualities) is apt to disconcert 
criticism. For instance, we learn much indirectly from his 
speeches, but we treat them as mainly his own compositions 
made to suit certain characters and certain occasions. We are 
tempted to think that his use of fiction based on inference 
ends with these set orations. But, if we turn to the story of 
Alcibiades' influence on Tissaphernes, we see the same method 



The Teaching of Ancient History. 37 

more subtilly disguised. Here are two arrant rogues in con- 
ference. That a third person was admitted is surely quite 
inconceivable. The account must either come from one of the 
principals, neither of whom was likely to tell the truth with 
honest intent : or from inference drawn by the writer or his 
direct informant. The context 1 of the passage (viii. 46) makes 
the latter alternative highly probable. We may perhaps con- 
clude that, even in Thucydides, what seems to be a narrative 
of attested facts may now and then be little more than acute, 
and probably correct, inference. In short, high literary qualities 
and trustworthy historical evidence are things wholly distinct : 
and this truism can never be too constantly borne in mind by 
the teacher or student of Ancient History. 

Speaking of literature reminds us of the most important of 
all the departments of history, the history of Thought. Intel- 
lectual and political movements are always acting and reacting 
on each other, and the continuity of history is sometimes most 
clearly seen in intellectual movements that do not for a long 
time appear on the surface of political life. They commonly 
have a moral side, and what touches life in the long run touches 
politics. Hence the immense interest of the early Greek 
Sophists. Here we find the beginnings of that long question- 
ing of Man, of the State, of popular theology and popular 
morals, that ends in cosmopolitanism and a practical mono- 
theism. The way is being prepared for the recognition of one 
great emperor on earth and one great God in heaven. The 
individual is beginning to assert himself, and the narrow city 
patriotism of the Greek enters on a period of sad but necessary 
decay. Great movements such as this find insufficient notice 
in ordinary manuals of history. They go on over so great a 
space of time, and spread over so wide an area, that it is hard 
to keep the attention fixed on them, and they commonly 
receive only scattered reference in the separate histories of 
Greece and Rome. There is work here for a teacher to do. 

1 Chapters 87-8 should also be read in connexion with this passage. 



38 The Teaching of Ancient History. 

If he does no more than make fairly clear the enormous 
power of Greek influences in Roman life and Roman history 
from the age of the Gracchi to the age of the Antonines, he 
will have done what is worth doing. He will have to treat of 
men of action as well as men of thought : and with the writer 
and the teacher he will have to place the freedman and the 
slave. He will range from theories of virtue to the ministry of 
pleasures : he will see the Roman love of precedent and order 
combining with wider views and a scientific bent, and the 
result a gradual reform of Law. He will have to illustrate the 
subtle variety of Greek influences in the case of such contem- 
poraries as Cicero and Atticus, Cato and Brutus, and last not 
least in the clearsighted and serene cosmopolitanism of Julius 
Caesar. 

" It is often asked, when should Ancient History be supposed 
to begin? Can a practical line be drawn? Archaeology over- 
laps what we can strictly call History, but it goes much further 
back : it revels in the 'prehistoric' So too Anthropology, of 
which in its widest sense History is but a branch. I must ask 
indulgence for an attempt to fix the beginning of History 
proper by the criterion of our beginning to know something 
of a people's thoughts and ideals. This view may derive 
support from the deep interest so long taken in the great 
'Homeric question.' That interest does not shew much sign of 
flagging. We long to know whose voice or voices are speaking 
to us. How much is due to imagination, how much is a 
picture of real life? What are the approximate dates of the 
poems? What age do they profess to represent ? And so on, 
question after question. Surely we feel that the history of the 
Greeks is beginning for us, when we read what the Greeks 
themselves treasured as the earliest voices of their race. 

The first and most obvious use of the study of Ancient 
History is that it prepares the way for an intelligent study of 
later times. It has, however, in and for itself, a high edu- 
cational value. The very defects of record that often make 



The Teaching of Ancient History. 39 

a certain conclusion unattainable are from this point of view a 
recommendation. Doubtful footing calls for careful walking, 
and the cautious inferences and frequent suspension of judg- 
ment unavoidable in Ancient History render it undeniably 
helpful in the training of a sober mind. Fair abilities and a 
sound elementary education must of course be presupposed in 
the student. History belongs rather to the later than to the 
earlier stages of a wholesome educational scheme. I shall 
decline the impertinence of offering general advice to teachers. 
Let me rather conclude with the harmless commonplace that as 
the teacher cannot do without books so books cannot at present 
do without the man. 



THE TEACHING OF ECONOMIC 
HISTORY. 



i. By the publication of the Wealth of Nations Adam 
Smith convinced the English public that Political Economy 
had a right to an independent place in the circle of the 
sciences ; in a similar way it was through the work of James 
Edward Thorold Rogers that Economic History came to be 
recognized in England as a separate branch of investigation. 
His monumental History of Agriculture and Prices, together 
with such special studies as the First Nine Years of the Bank 
of England, forced men to feel that the abundant materials he 
made available had been too long neglected ; while his Six 
Centuries and Economic Interpretation of History shewed that 
the new method of investigation might throw much fresh 
suggestion and interesting side-lights on the most familiar 
periods of English history. Before bis epoch-making work on 
Agriculture and Prices appeared, these questions had been 
regarded by English writers as an interesting topic for occasional 
and incidental remark; but he demonstrated effectively that 
this subject is deserving of the serious attention it now receives 
from the general historian, and that it demands separate and 
independent treatment, so that its bearing may be properly 
brought out. 

2. There had been various causes at work which had 
rendered Englishmen less ready than Continental scholars to 
attempt to remedy their neglect of the economic side of national 



The Teaching of Economic History. 41 

life 1 . Historians were apt to leave such phenomena on one 
side, because they found so little material in the sources to 
which they habitually turned. The facts about economic 
changes have often been recorded, but they are rarely 
chronicled. The changes from natural to money economy, 
and the rise of a class of free labourers in England, were slow 
processes extending over many centuries. These movements 
were for the most part so gradual that they eluded the ob- 
servation of contemporary writers. They were, moreover, 
movements that were brought about unconsciously, and cannot 
be ascribed to the deliberate policy of any known individual, 
and they are therefore unassociated with any great name. 
The personal element was for the most part lacking ; and the 
annalist, who recorded the doings of men, was apt to treat 
economic affairs as the mere setting of a drama that derived its 
interest from the play of passion and the triumph of the strong 
man or the wise ruler. The chronicles published by the Master 
of the Rolls rarely furnished the necessary data ; and even 
when they happened to include occasional reference to economic 
affairs, it was difficult for the modern student to find a clue to 
the meaning of the incidents recorded. Nor could the student 
of history obtain much help in this matter from the English 
economists. The classical school, with Mill as its -last repre- 
sentative, professed to study the facts of modern society; it 
was only on the assumption of free competition that their 
principles and terminology would apply, or that, as they held, 
any economic science was possible. It was thus that they 
dismissed the conditions of earlier days to a supposed age of 
custom as a dreary limbo which the light of science could 
never hope to penetrate. There were, of course, authors like 
Finlay, who had a keen insight into the economic side of 
human affairs ; but quotations of prices, and market regula- 
tions and financial expedients were for the most part such 

1 Compare my article Why had Roschcr so Little I7ifl7ience in England? 
in the Annals of the American Academy of Political Science, 1894. 



42 The Teaching of Economic History. 

unintelligible details that the historian was apt to put them on 
one side, while the economist could not give effective aid in the 
effort to analyse, to describe and to coordinate such obscure 
phenomena. 

3. Both from the nature of the recorded information on 
which we have to rely and from the character of the results 
sought for, Economic History must be dealt with as a separate 
branch of study, if it is to be properly treated at all. To make 
this claim is not to advocate any revolutionary change in the 
conception of History as a whole. We may plead for the 
careful and thorough examination of this one aspect, without 
forgetting that it is only an aspect ; or even without contend- 
ing that this has in itself more importance than other lines of 
historical research. Economic History deals with the physical 
side of the life of communities and of individuals : it dwells on 
the practical use and misuse of national resources, and the suc- 
cesses and failures due to financial experiments ; and it brings 
into prominence the fundamental influence in social affairs of 
the need of food and shelter and the requirements which man 
feels in common with lower animals. For many of us, how- 
ever, the chief attraction of historical study is due to the 
elements that are distinctively human ; it lies in the growth of 
polities, in the institutions for administering justice and for 
organizing mutual defence, in personal aims and national 
aspirations and the effort to realize them. There is doubtless 
the closest connexion and interrelation between the institu- 
tional or religious development of a people and its material 
progress ; but after all, the Body Politic, with the institutions 
by which free men govern themselves, is a more admirable 
creation of Reason than the Economic Organism in which 
men cater for each other's needs. The development of the 
State is the final object of research ; but the more thoroughly 
we apply ourselves to political and constitutional history, the 
more necessary will it be at every point to take account of the 
results obtained by the study of Economic History. We may 



The Teaching of Economic History. 43 

devote ourselves to this branch of work not as an end in itself, 
but because we regard it as a necessary means for getting a 
clearer view of the actual development of the State. We may- 
recognise its real importance without regarding it as supreme ; 
we may take account of economic forces, while we decline to 
admit that the pressure of physical needs has been the main 
factor in determining the course of human affairs'. 

4. Economic History, though not of paramount or exclu- 
sive importance, yet rightly claims the serious attention of 
students. It brings into light the reasons for military or 
political action that would otherwise be obscure, and thus 
helps to render the whole course of human affairs more intelli- 
gible. The failure of Charles V.'s schemes for the mainte- 
nance of the ancient regime in Germany and his personal loss 
of prestige, were directly due to the exhaustion of his credit 
with the Fuggers of Augsburg. The financial difficulties of the 
papacy in the fifteenth century had not a little to do with the 
widespread sale of indulgences and the scandals which roused 
Luther to action. Economic analysis invariably has the effect 
of turning the attention from that which lies on the surface to 
the deeper influences that are less easily observed. These 
forces are all the more potent because their action is often 
gradual and sometimes cumulative ; it is easy for the student 
to leave them out of sight till the description of some sudden 
crisis forces them on his notice ; but it is necessary to take 
account of the beginnings and stages in Economic develop- 
ment if we would understand constitutional changes and 
foreign and domestic policy. Industrial and commercial 
affairs must for convenience sake be treated apart, but they 
cannot be omitted, if the course of History is to be rendered 
intelligible and the study is to be conducted in a scientific spirit. 

When we once take our stand consciously on the economic 
platform we are able, with comparatively little effort, to get 
into close touch with the men of past ages. There is often a 
1 Cunningham, Growth of Industry and Commerce, I. 12. 



44 The Teaching of Economic History. 

strange sense of bewilderment in studying the religious ideas 
or even the moral judgments current in bygone times ; the 
influence of omens on the fortunes of war in ancient days is 
unintelligible to us ; the contrast between the high ideals and 
the grossness of medieval life is a. shock to our sensibility ; and 
even in modern days we are confused by the different concep- 
tions of liberty and justice which are found in different coun- 
tries. But the practical problems which men have to face are 
very similar in all ages : the chief requirements of human life, 
food, shelter and clothing, involve the use of the same pro- 
ducts and a similar struggle with nature ; the husbandry and 
cattle-breeding of different peoples are alike ; the industrial 
arts — mining and smelting, spinning and weaving — have only 
undergone considerable change in countries where the era of 
invention has made its mark. With a little effort we can place 
ourselves in thought on the industrial level of primitive man. 
So, too, wherever the use of money and the development of 
credit have come into vogue at all they have had analogous 
effects on commercial practice. Indeed, we may press the 
matter further and say that the forms of economic organization 
which have been developed among different peoples are singu- 
larly alike ; the household, as a social unit with no economic 
independence in its parts, is found in all ages, though the 
functions it subserves have been greatly restricted in modern 
times ; city life, with its enormous resources, and its possibili- 
ties of administrative corruption, has been a feature common 
to all high civilizations. In their ideals and aspirations men differ 
fundamentally ; but the touch of practical necessity makes the 
whole world kin; the limitations imposed by physical needs 
are similar for all peoples; the opportunities afforded by natural 
resources in one age resemble those offered in another, though 
there is a growth in the power of appreciating and using them. 
The organs and the methods which human society has deve- 
loped at different times for dealing with industrial problems 
are closely analogous. Hence, while the historian must often 



The Teaching of Economic History. 45 

treat of things that are unfamiliar, he will find that in this 
practical sphere the habits and institutions of the past have 
much in common with affairs that lie within present day expe- 
rience. The economic interpretation of history not only helps 
to call attention to underlying tendencies, but brings the men 
of the distant past on to a plane where we can, if we try, enter 
most closely into their interests and find their action thoroughly 
comprehensible. 

5. To the student of the past economic research offers 
many advantages, not only in the assistance it may give in 
interpreting particular epochs and incidents, but from the 
manner in which it presents the continuity of History. Man's 
enthusiasms and opinions and passions are subject to frequent, 
and sometimes violent change ; but in so far as his relations to 
his physical environment are concerned, his activities must be 
steadily maintained from month to month and year to year. 
Each season the grain has been sowed and the harvest reaped 
with more or less success : there has been no break in the 
recurrence of agricultural operations or of industrial life. So 
too, the lines of communication which have once been opened 
by trade are not easily interrupted, but serve after long ages 
for the intercourse of peoples and the transmission of culture. 
These physical conditions remain very much the same ; and 
the constitution of human society, in so far as it is organized 
with reference to these matters, has a remarkable persistences 
There has been a perpetuation of the manual arts from sheer 
necessity, and a transmission of particular forms of skill among 
new peoples, as well as a transplanting of institutions that are 
congruent with particular phases of industrial life. This process 
has involved constant adaptation and modification : but, till a 
century ago, it has been a gradual readjustment without sudden 
breaks or violent changes 1 . By no other line of historical 

1 The age of geographical discovery may be taken as the exception that 
proves the rule, and it was only brought about through long and conscious 
effort. 



46 The Teaching of Economic History. 

study is the continuity of human history and the organic 
connexion of the past and present so clearly exhibited. 

6. To the man of affairs Economic History may prove of 
interest from quite another reason — by furnishing a clue to 
unfamiliar habits and practice in the present day. The 
expansion of Western Civilization has brought Europeans and 
Americans into the closest contact with many barbarous and 
half-civilized peoples, whose usages and habits are strange to 
us. For purposes of trade it is convenient to understand their 
methods of dealing; while the administrator who rules over 
them cannot easily see how the incidence of taxation will be 
distributed in their communities or what are the possibilities of 
social oppression against which it is necessary to guard. Some 
of the most regrettable blunders of the English govern- 
ment in India have been due to an inability to understand the 
working of native institutions. A careful study of the past of 
our own race, or of the earlier habits of other peoples when 
natural economy still reigned, would at least have suggested a 
point of view from which the practical problems in India might 
be more wisely looked at. By means of analogies drawn from 
the past we may come to understand the advantage, under 
certain circumstances, of fiscal methods that seem to be cum- 
brous, and the danger of introducing modern improvements in 
a polity that is not prepared to assimilate them. 

7. Since the teaching of Economic History as an inde- 
pendent branch of study has been so recently introduced, there 
has hardly been enough experience to warrant any definite 
conclusions about the best methods of instruction, especially 
as the subject belongs to different groups in the curricula of 
different Universities. At Harvard, in the new Cambridge, it 
is treated as a branch of Economics, and attended by those 
who have some familiarity with modern Economics ; in the 
old Cambridge it is hardly taken up by the best economic 
students at all, while it forms a part of the regular course for 
the Historical Tripos, though it is not a necessary subject in 



The Teaching of Economic History. 47 

that department. It appears, however, that there are three lines 
of inquiry which the student should be encouraged to pursue, 
if he is to be properly equipped for making use of this branch 
of knowledge, either in connexion with historical research or in 
the practical business of life. 

a. It seems desirable that he should become acquainted 
with the economic development of some one particular country 
from its earliest beginnings. The change from natural to 
money economy and its effects can be examined most clearly 
when the field is limited ; the various social organisms, — such 
as the household, the city, and the nation, — can be best com- 
prehended in their several characters, and their mutual relations 
can be most easily understood when they are seen in a limited 
area. The various economic institutions, — merchant gilds, and 
misteries, staples, and regulated companies, — may be treated 
with greater precision when they are separated from analogous 
but different associations. And if one country is to be thus 
selected it is clear that England has special claims to be taken 
as the type. The mass of recorded evidence which is available 
in England is very large, and there is extant information on 
many points that cannot apparently be treated with the same 
definiteness in other lands. England is so far isolated by her 
position that it is possible to trace her debt to other countries 
with comparative certainty, while the rapidity and the extent 
of the growth of her industrial prosperity make English history 
an appropriate field for observing this line of progress. English 
Economic History, as giving the type of the actual development 
of one society, is a natural basis for all instruction in this de- 
partment. 

b. It is also necessary that the student should have an 
acquaintance with economic terminology and be habituated to 
economic analysis, so as to have the means of describing the 
phenomena of the past and of stating the economic causes of 
growth or decay. The Classical Economists were at no pains 
to state their doctrines in a form in which they could be of 



48 The Teaching -.of Economic History. 

service to the investigator of history ; they concentrated their 
attention on modern society and assumed the existence of free 
competition in formulating their principles; and they were 
consequently unable to provide the necessary phraseology for 
discussing other phases of human progress. But they did not 
say the last word. Modern Economists have discarded this 
restriction, and endeavour to enlarge the subject-matter of the 
science and to take account of the human race in all stages 
of its progress 1 . Even for the thorough understanding of the 
special conditions to which the classical writers confined their 
attention, it is necessary to include a large range of phenomena 
which they ignored. Since Economists have begun to treat 
modern problems in their proper place as the most recent 
phase of a long-continued process, they have gradually pro- 
vided a scientific economic terminology which is directly 
applicable to bygone times. 

c. The student who is acquainted with one concrete type 
of economic development, and has an adequate nomenclature 
at his command, should be encouraged to enlarge his know- 
ledge by studying other societies, and especially to obtain a 
survey in outline of the contribution of each people to the 
economic history of the world. He may thus get a clearer 
grasp of the institutions with which he has already become 
acquainted, by comparing them with their analogues ; he will 
trace the action of similar causes in different places or at 
different times, and thus gauge their importance more truly, 
while he will get a clearer view of the unity of history and 
of the part which each people has played in the progress of the 
race' 2 . 

8. From the foregoing paragraphs it will have already 

1 K. Biicher, Entstehung, 8. 

2 Each of these topics has formed part of the regular instruction in 
Cambridge ; and for each I have attempted to provide a small text-book, 
(a) Outlines of English Industrial History (with E. A. McArthur), 
\b) Modern Civilisation in its Economic Aspects, (c) Western Civilisation. 



The Teaching of Economic History. 49 

appeared that in the opinion of the writer, Economic History 
is not a branch of learning which can be wisely included in a 
school course. There are of course many economic phenomena 
which may be usefully attended to by the teacher; but the 
subject is deficient in direct human interest, and deals with the 
deeper and less obvious causes of change ; it may well be 
deferred till it can be entered on as a subject of academic 
study. And it has much to offer which renders it a valuable 
medium of instruction at the University ; it necessarily brings 
the student face to face with many problems in the weighing of 
evidence ; it forces him to feel the supreme importance of 
documents as a source of information, and to realize the diffi- 
culties in interpreting them aright. It may also prove of value 
in rousing the interest of students in their work, by bringing 
them into closer touch with the men of bygone days — their 
methods of work and habits of business. In so far as it 
renders the past less bookish, and by shewing us men engaged 
in familiar pursuits makes it more vivid, the economic aspect 
of history may prove attractive to beginners who find the de- 
velopment of constitutional liberties comparatively uninspiring. 
Lastly, it may be pointed out that it offers an ample field 
for students to make their first essays in planning and carry- 
ing out an original investigation. From the very fact that 
Economic History has only recently received due recognition 
there are many points in this branch of research which demand 
much fuller examination than they have yet received; and 
some of these can be usefully dealt with in moderate compass. 
The inquirer, who has a little skill and patience at command, 
may hope to find a definite task on which to try his unaided 
powers, and the subject that attracts him most is likely to be that 
in which he will do his best. When viewed from this standpoint, 
we may see that the Economic History is proving an admirable 
medium for the self-education of those who have taken their 
degrees and desire to pursue their studies further. The former 
students of the Cambridge Historical School have compiled 
a. 4 



50 The Teaching of Economic History. 

during the last ten years a considerable number of interesting 
monographs, and their work in the field of Economic History 
has been productive of some results that are likely to prove of 
permanent value. The method of training has been tentative, 
and it will doubtless be greatly improved by longer experience ; 
but when tried by this test it seems to have had a measure of 
success. 



THE TEACHING OF 
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 1 . 



To those who hold that history is one and indivisible, to 
speak of constitutional history is an offence. If Freeman said 
that there was no such thing as ancient history, his successors 
protest against ecclesiastical, constitutional, economic, or 
military history. The extremists go so far as to refuse us 
national history, and would make the true standpoint of the 
historian international. 

The position is at any rate an arguable one. It is a matter 
of vital importance in our national history that England was 
for centuries consciously a part of the Church Universal, and 
it may be said that the historian should not be encouraged to 
relegate this fact and its vast consequences to a separate 
volume. The history of the Church is closely connected with 
the history of the constitution, and that again with the history 
of industry. Military history can scarcely be treated apart 
from State policy, and in some periods dynastic history seems 
at first sight almost to cover the whole ground. 

But what is philosophically desirable is not always practically 
possible, and though the historian can sometimes afford to be 
a philosopher, the teacher of history must be a man of business. 

1 The writer desires gratefully to acknowledge the suggestive criticism 
of Mr Stanley M. Leathes, of Trinity College, Cambridge, to whom this 
chapter was submitted in manuscript. 

4—2 



52 The Teaching of Constitutional History. 

Experience shews that as a matter of business subdivision is 
essential, and we can quote against the philosophers one of 
themselves. 'Above all things,' says Bacon 1 , ' order, and dis- 
tribution, and singling out of parts, is the life of despatch : so 
as the distribution be not too subtile ; for he that doth not 
divide will never enter well into business, and he that divideth 
too much will never come out of it clearly.' English con- 
stitutional history is by tradition the backbone of the Cambridge 
Historical Tripos, and a continuous experience of many years 
has proved that it can be taught efficiently as a subject by 
itself, without the separation doing violence to the sense of 
proportion, or obscuring its true relation to the larger subject 
of which it is a part. 

In the Cambridge school division has indeed been carried 
further, and English constitutional history has itself been 
divided at a.d. 1485, the earlier subject being assigned to 
Part I. of the Tripos, and the later to Part II. This involves 
their being taught in different years and by different lecturers. 
Perhaps a.d. 1485 originally became the landmark because it 
was the point at which Stubbs ended and Hallam began, but 
without venturing to dispute the question with the high 
authorities who prefer a.d. 1509, we may hold that the 
separation between medieval and modern history may be 
looked for not very far from this point. The reign of 
Henry VII. marks the surrender of feudal decentralisation to 
the forces of government, and the end of private war. It is 
true that Green places his 'new monarchy ' earlier and makes 
Henry VII. an imitator of Edward IV., but Edward IV.'s 
reign left the factions unreconciled and the dynastic quarrel 
still alive, while Henry VII. 's claim to be the founder of a new 
monarchy rests on the achievement of a united kingdom, an 
assured succession, and independence of foreign interference. 
The influence of the Renaissance and the New Learning point 

1 Essays Civil and Moral, XXV. ' Of Despatch. ' 



The Teaching of Constitutional History. 53 

in the same direction. The discovery of the New World was 
making it no longer possible to believe that the whole drama 
of human action had been played on a narrow stage. This 
one event, as has been pointed out often enough, must have 
involved a reconstruction of men's ways of thinking analogous 
to that which was to take place later in a different sphere, 
when the Copernican theories revealed the immense extension 
of the Universe in space, and the relative insignificance of the 
planet which had hitherto been deemed the only world, lying 
under its 'majestical roof fretted with golden fire.' And it 
was just now that the printing-press was beginning to admit 
the many to share the speculations of the few. Thus, in spite 
of the survival of chivalry at the English Court — the accounts 
of Hall and Holinshed read like the Morte <F Arthur 1 — 
Henry VII. and his son may be classed as modern princes. 
Even the notion of the expansion of England begins with the 

1 ' On the first day of May the king, accompanied with many lusty 
bachelors on great and well-doing horses, rode to the wood to fetch May ; 
where a man might have seen many a horse raised on high, with carrier, 
gallop, turn, and stop, marvellous to behold. ...And as they were returning 
on the hill a ship met with them under sail. The master hailed the king 
and that noble company, and said that he was a mariner, and was come 
from many a strange port, and came thither to see if any deeds of arms 
were to be done in the country, of the which he might make true 
report in other countries.' The ship is called Fame, and is laden with 
'good Renown.' ' Then said the herald : If you will bring your ship into the 
bay of Hardiness you must double the point of Gentleness, and there you 
shall see a company that will meddle with your merchandise. Then said 
the king: Sithens Renown is their merchandise let us buy it if we can. 
Then the ship shot a peal of guns, and sailed forth before the king's 

company full of flags and banners till it came to the tiltyard Then began 

the trumpets to sound and the horses to run, that many a spear was brast 
and many a great stripe given.... On the third day the queen made a great 
banket to the king and all them that had justed ; and after the banket 
done she gave the chief prize to the king, the second to the Earl of Essex, 
the third to the Earl of Devonshire, and the fourth to the lord Marquess 
Dorset. Then the heralds cried : My lords, for your noble feats in arms God 
send you the love of your ladies that you most desire.' (Holinshed, p. 809). 



54 The Teaching of Constitutional History. 

Tudors, and Lord Herbert of Cherbury makes the statesmen 
of 151 1 say : ' When we would enlarge ourselves let it be that 
way we can, and to which it seems the Eternal Providence 
hath destined us; which is, by sea' 1 . 

But it is not suggested that the division of constitutional 
history for purposes of teaching into two halves is ideally the 
best method. The considerations that make it necessary are 
at bottom practical considerations. Just as in research the 
medievalist and the modernist are inevitable products of needful 
specialisation, so in teaching it is scarcely possible that the 
whole of English constitutional history should be thoroughly 
well done by one man — at any rate if University standards are 
to be maintained. 

From the teacher's point of view it is a notable fact that of 
late years English constitutional history has become at once 
more interesting and of higher educational value. If recol- 
lections of the undergraduate's standpoint as it was twenty 
years ago are to be trusted, the earlier part of the subject was 
deposited in three sacred volumes, which were approached by 
the devout disciple in much the same spirit as that in which 
the youthful Brahmin draws near to the Vedas. To read the 
first volume of Stubbs was necessary to salvation ; to read the 
second was greatly to be desired ; the third was reserved for 
the ambitious student who sought to accumulate merit by 
unnatural austerities — but between them they covered the 
whole ground. The lecturer lectured on Stubbs; the com- 
mentator elucidated him; the crammer boiled him down. 
Within those covers was to be found the final word on every 
controversy, and in this faith the student moved serene. 

Had our classic been less learned, less comprehensive, less 
profound, such a superstition could scarcely have grown up 
round a single treatise, but it was a beneficent superstition 
while it lasted, and not a few of the generation now middle- 

1 Life and Reign of King Henry the Eighth, 18. 



The Teaching of Constitutional History. 55 

aged can trace back their first notion of what is meant by the 
judicial treatment of a complex case to a reverential study of 
Stubbs's Constitutional History. But controversy has its uses 
in education, and it is not good that all questions should be 
settled in advance by authority. An exposition of the reasons 
why A is wrong may be of more educational value than a 
statement of the fact that B is right, and it is fortunate that 
recent research in this subject has increased the number of 
questions that may be debated and has at the same time in- 
tensified the interest of the debates. What were once the official 
views have been attacked, and brilliantly attacked, at many 
points. By the History of E?tglish Law, and Domesday Book 
and Beyond, to say nothing of Roman Canon Law in the Church 
of England, and his other contributions to legal history, Professor 
Maitland has laid students of the English constitution under 
obligations that are incalculable. Mr Horace Round has 
revolutionised our views on knight service, the hundred, and a 
variety of kindred matters. Other writers have exhibited the 
extraordinary difficulty of questions that once seemed to belong 
to the category of problems solved. It has been the business 
of the teachers to bring the new knowledge to bear on the 
old conclusions, and to shew how far and why these are to 
be modified, and the result has been to create a new atmo- 
sphere of criticism in the lecture-room. It is perhaps fanciful 
to detect a difference in the educational product, and to 
suggest that under the new order the student has become more 
inquiring, more acute, and less easily satisfied with the regular 
formulae. 

Ever since the beginning the Cambridge school has set 
great store by the study of documents, and this we owe to the 
early pioneers. For many years Stubbs's Select Charters was 
the corner-stone of the structure, though as the volume did 
not deal with the 14th and 15th centuries, supplied no detailed 
comment, and might easily be strengthened, especially in pre- 
Norman periods, a good deal was left for the teacher to do. 



56 The Teaching of Constitutional History. 

Then came Dr S. R. Gardiner's Constitutional Documents of 
the Puritan Revolution, 1625 — 1660 ; and not long after 
Dr G. W. Prothero published Statutes and Constitutional 
Documents, 1559 — 1625, with its full and suggestive Intro- 
duction. The Reformation statutes are be found in Docu- 
ments illustrative of English Church History, compiled by 
Mr H. Gee and Mr W. J. Hardy, but a convenient volume 
of papers for the Restoration and Hanoverian periods is yet 
to seek. With the original papers actually at hand it is 
possible to achieve something remotely analogous to laboratory 
work, and to illustrate the processes by which history is really 
made. At the same time the ancient phrases and the con- 
ceptions of other days help to furnish a background and an 
atmosphere to the young historian. In this way better than in 
obedience to express precept the conviction with which he 
starts is gradually abandoned that all historical problems are 
capable of being stated in terms of Victorian politics. 

Nevertheless it is important that the teacher of constitutional 
history, while appreciating the need of antiquarian research, 
should also be on his guard against its dangers. It is necessary 
as an aid and a commentary, but it should not be allowed to be- 
come the principal subject of interest and study. It is scarcely 
too much to say that there are things which a student must be 
told, but which it is most undesirable that he should make an 
effort to remember. For instance, if the teacher explains to him 
the exact nature of the vixxt praecipe and of 'prerogative wardship,' 
it should not be with a view to his retaining their technicalities 
in his mind, but rather to illustrate and make more real the 
relation between the King and the under-lords. The chief 
difficulty is that of satisfying the need for solidity and con- 
nectedness without overburdening the memory. This last 
danger is increased by the fact that the principal authorities 
for early constitutional history are laws and edicts. This sets 
up a tendency to wander too far into legal matters, instead of 
devoting this wasted energy to an attempt to understand the 



The Teaching of Constitutional History. 57 

conditions under which these laws and edicts worked, and the 
manner of their administration. It is true that it may be im- 
possible to discover these, but the attempt must be made, and 
until it has been made it is dangerous to accept a law as an ulti- 
mate, dominating fact, as if it were a nineteenth century statute. 

Another point of importance to the teacher — especially to 
the teacher of earlier constitutional history — is the necessity 
of accentuating the difference between medieval habits of mind 
and life and modern. It is desirable that the student should 
learn to sympathise with Becket, and even with Richard II.; it 
is not good that he should side as a partisan, even with Simon 
de Montfort. The natural tendency to become enthusiastic 
over liberal and modern movements in medieval history is so 
strong that the teacher will do wisely to lay stress, even to 
exaggeration, upon the fundamental differences. 

It may not be superfluous to mention also the risk which 
the student of earlier constitutional history runs of substituting 
words and expressions for ideas. Absolute darkness often 
lurks behind the easy use of such phrases as 'feudal,' 'manorial,' 
'parliamentary,' 'representative,' and yet it is possible by the 
use of them to make an appearance of knowledge. It will be 
part of the business of the judicious teacher to expose these 
impostures, and to make sure that the terms sum up knowledge 
instead of serving as a substitute for it. He will also be careful 
to realise the necessity of clearly distinguishing facts that are 
ascertained, from inferences which however probable are not 
certain. The immature student aches for a dogma and yearns 
for simplicity. He must learn by painful repetition that dog- 
matic assertion about the facts of medieval history is too often 
false, and that medieval life was hardly more simple than modern. 

There is another danger that arises where the teaching of 
a subject like English constitutional history becomes too 
merely antiquarian. The student who investigates origins and 
machinery may easily lose his sense of proportion, and cease to 
appreciate the relation of his special department to all that 



58 The Teaching of Constitutional History. 

lies outside it. In Cambridge a corrective to this is found in 
the still unexhausted influence of Seeley among the teachers 
who were once his pupils. His habit was to seek for tendencies 
and causes. He preferred what he called 'large considera- 
tions,' and was more at home in dealing with a century than a 
decade. The whole drift of his mind was towards the sug- 
gestive treatment of large phenomena rather than the minute 
investigation of details. His most characteristic course of 
lectures as Regius Professor of Modern History was one on 
the Holy Roman Empire, delivered in the academical year 
1879-80, in which he began with the fall of Rome before the 
barbarians and ended with a lecture on the characteristics of 
modern democracy. Thus it would be difficult for a pupil of 
Seeley's, while dealing with a department and expounding the 
importance of documents, to lose touch altogether with the 
general course of events in history. In describing the Church 
settlement of Elizabeth, for instance, a teacher of this school 
would not be content with the Acts of Supremacy and Uni- 
formity and the terms of the Prayer-book and the Articles. 
He would point out that the Church of Elizabeth was an island 
Church, as unlike the Churches of Zurich and Geneva on 
the one side as she was to the Church of Rome on the other — 
the Prayer-book gathered from ancient sources, the tone 
of her devotion widely different from the spirit of continental 
Church worship, the ' organic relation with Catholic antiquity ' 
carefully preserved. As one has well said, the Church of 
Elizabeth was isolated ' from the rest of Christendom, 
and cut off from the flow of its religious thought. She was 
not Catholic, as countries which accepted the decrees of 
the Council of Trent understood Catholicism ; still less was 
she Protestant, as Calvin or William the Silent understood 
Protestantism 1 .' It is a narrow view that rules out of the 
province of the teacher of constitutional history general facts 
of this order of importance. He is concerned primarily, it is 
1 H. O. Wakeman, The Church and the Puritans, p. 11. 



The Teaching of Constitutional History. 59 

true, with the constitutional machinery of the Church, but it is 
essential that he should deal, however briefly, with the place 
of the Church in the order of Christendom, and her relation to 
the other bodies which the Reformation created. 

To take another illustration — the teacher of English con- 
stitutional history is mainly concerned with the causes which 
led to the Revolution of 1688, the curious quasi-legal procedure 
by which it was effected, and its immediate and ultimate results 
upon the constitution of the 18th century. But the Revolution 
was also an event of the utmost importance in European 
history, an episode in the conflict with Louis XIV. William 
of Orange did not come to England as William the Conqueror 
came — to obtain for himself a better inheritance. His expedition 
was in a manner a daring attempt to occupy one of the vital 
strategic positions in the battlefield of Europe — to appropriate 
the resources and fleet of England for the benefit of the 
combination against France. 

The point is that though as a matter of business it is con- 
venient to teach history by departments, it is not well that the 
teacher should be troubled by too fine a sense of relevance. 
The development of institutions may be his main concern, but 
he must not lose sight of the relation of the parts to the whole. 
Thus in spite of his documents and his antiquarianism, he is 
not cut oft" from the great, the stirring, the dramatic aspects of 
history. He is not so completely absorbed in musty records 
that he has no eye for the great elemental forces. It is there- 
fore possible for his work to stimulate thought and imagination 
as well as to promote accuracy. Though vitally interested in 
the minutiae of his subject, he finds himself also concerned 
with 'large considerations.' This perhaps is the answer to the 
question how constitutional history can be brought to bear 
effectively upon the average student, who is suspicious of 
documents and is apt to be bored by details. If the teaching 
is pedantic and narrow, history is a lost cause with him. If it 
gives him a reason for his work, explains to what purpose facts 



60 The Teaching of Constitutional History. 

are to be mastered, exhibits the relation of his subject to the 
general drift of things, there is a fair chance that the dull 
imagination may be quickened and the dry bones may live. 

It is good that the teacher of constitutional history should 
look beyond the limits of his department, but it is also good 
that he should allow his mind to play freely within it. While 
avoiding what is fanciful, he must keep an open mind for 
analogies and contrasts that are really suggestive. These are 
specially to be desired after the death of Queen Anne, when 
the reign of dulness sets in. The ultimate dependence of the 
Prime Minister upon Parliament is a point that gains in interest 
if it is contrasted with the days when a minister, unless sup- 
ported by a popular rising, depended wholly upon the king, so 
that for Wolsey it was as true as for the Eastern vizier that 
'in the light of the king's countenance' was life, and his wrath 
'as messengers of death 1 .' And the same official's supreme 
position and monopoly of affairs is the more striking when we 
are reminded that it was made a matter of complaint against 
Buckingham in Charles I.'s reign that he was — what the modern 
Prime Minister is recognised to be — a ' monopolist of counsels,' 
a ' blazing star very exorbitant in the affairs of this Common- 
wealth.' 

The habit of allowing the mind thus to range freely over a 
great area is not without its perils for weaker students. Super- 
ficial generalisation, the hunt for distant analogies, the eloquent 
development of misleading contrasts — these have a dangerous 
fascination ; and a pernicious taste for the dramatic may be 
easily acquired. But constitutional history is heavily ballasted 
with facts, and it is impossible to make a fair show in it without 
1 Brewer points out that it is when the king first frowns on him that 
Shakespeare makes Wolsey say : 

' I have touched the highest point of all my greatness ; 

And from that full meridian of my glory 

I haste now to my setting: I shall fall 

Like a bright exhalation in the evening, 

And no man see me more.' 



TJie Teaching of Constitutional History. 61 

some solid reading. Thus the risks are on the whole far less 
than in some other subjects, and after all it is possible to 
sacrifice too much to safety, for the best things are missed by 
those who refuse to leave the beaten track. We cannot afford 
to neglect any reasonable means of rousing the interest and 
stimulating the imagination, and what helps the stronger men 
to firmness of grasp and independence of judgment must not 
be set on one side in the supposed interests of the weaker 
brethren. There are many ways of repressing exuberance, and 
the nature of the subject will prevent anyone going very far 
wrong. The teacher of constitutional history is obliged to be 
systematic ; there is no reason why he should not do his best 
to be suggestive also. 

It should be noted in this connexion that in later con- 
stitutional history the natural order of treatment is not for 
the most part chronological. In the Tudor period the 
Reformation stands as a chapter by itself. Ministers and 
Council, the Star Chamber, Judicature and Police, the Law 
of Treason, Ecclesiastical Courts, Local Government, Par- 
liament, Finance, are all capable of treatment in separate 
lectures. The history of the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- 
turies can be dealt with in the same way. Three or four 
lectures on the changes in the position and power of the Crown 
since the death of Queen Anne give all that is needed in the 
way of an outline of events ; the rest of the subject can be 
treated under the history of separate institutions, such as the 
Prime Minister, the Cabinet, Justice, Parliament, and the 
like. The seventeenth century, however, presents peculiar 
difficulties, and requires a different method. The whole 
character of the period is dramatic, and the story must be 
allowed to unfold itself according to the order of events. Here 
the separate treatment of institutions will be abandoned, and 
the lectures will have a different kind of title — Religious 
Questions under James I., Political Questions under James I., 
Buckingham and Charles I., Non-parliamentary Government, 



62 The Teaching of Constitutional History. 

the Long Parliament and Reform, the Long Parliament and 
Revolution, the Commonwealth, the Protectorate, the Restora- 
tion, the Pension Parliament, the Exclusion Bill, the Revolution. 
In planning out a course of lectures on later constitutional 
history it will be found convenient to preface each of the three 
main periods by an introductory lecture, avoiding details and 
giving a preliminary survey of the ground. In the first of 
these something may be said of the conditions under which the 
Tudor system came to be established, — of 'livery and mainte- 
nance,' the 'eating canker of want' which enfeebled the Lan- 
castrian government, the historical importance of Fortescue, 
the evidence of the Paston Letters, the humiliation of the 
baronage after the wars of the Roses, and the dynastic position 
of the first two Tudor kings. The introductory lecture on the 
Stuart period would naturally deal with the changed conditions 
of the seventeenth century as compared with the sixteenth. 
The danger from great lords and their retainers had passed 
away, and the long arm of the Privy Council reached into 
every corner of the kingdom. What men needed now was not 
protection from the great lords, but protection from the tyranny 
of the power by which the great lords had been overthrown. 
The results of the Reformation were now accepted. The long 
reign of Elizabeth had brought the greater part of the nation 
into the fold of the Church of England, and the adherents of 
Rome were only a minority that had ceased to be dangerous. 
There was no longer any serious danger of foreign invasion, 
for one result of the Tudor period had been an improvement 
in the defensible position of England. The successful rebellion 
of the United Provinces against Spain had placed the ports of 
Holland in the hands of a friendly Protestant power. Ireland, 
the 'postern-gate' for Spain, had been reduced to order by 
the vigorous Viceroys of Elizabeth; the Reformation had 
separated Scotland from France, and the accession of Tames I. 
had united her to England. Thus the England of the 
Stuarts was an island such as Shakespeare had dreamed of 



The Teaching of Constitutional History. 63 

— compact within itself, 'in a great pool a swan's nest,' 
'this precious stone set in the silver sea.' To those who 
could not foresee the Civil War it must have seemed as 
if trouble could only come from the Continent — no longer 
from Scotland, or Ireland, or the 'local disturbances of 
hostile lords.' A danger of Elizabeth's reign had been a 
disputed succession, but the Stuart House succeeded without 
opposition; and unlike the childless Tudors the Stuarts 
were ' enriched ' with ' a most royal progeny of most rare and 
excellent gifts and forwardness.' Yet the race that now in- 
herited the Cr-own of England was politically inferior, and at a 
jtime when the changed conditions required the highest and 
most far-seeing statesmanship, its members displayed qualities 
of only the ordinary type. Meanwhile a rival power had been 
growing up that was ready to take their authority out of their 
hands. One of the great achievements of the Tudor period 
had been the consolidation of Parliamentary institutions, and 
in Parliament the House of Commons was becoming the most 
important factor, for the country gentry and the commercial 
classes had been elevated into political importance. And if 
Parliament had grown strong enough in the sixteenth century 
to be a rival to the Crown should need arise, in the seventeenth 
century powerful motives began to operate to induce Parlia- 
ment to take up an independent attitude— motives arising out 
of two questions of the first importance, taxation and religion. 
Yet there was nothing revolutionary about the tone of the 
earlier Parliamentary leaders. It was not Pym and Hampden 
who were the Jacobins of the Great Rebellion. Their business 
was to deal with isolated abuses, and they did not realise at 
once that their attacks upon individual grievances were taking 
shape in a coherent policy, which was destined in the long run 
to transfer the ultimate sovereignty from the Crown to Parlia- 
ment, and so to shift the centre of gravity of the State. There 
is no eager modernness about the statesmen of the Long 
Parliament. They are not always applying abstract principles, 



64 The Teaching of Constitutional History. 

or periodically calling upon ancient institutions to justify their 
existence. With them 'the novelty' though not rejected, was 
'held for a suspect.' If circumstances had allowed them they 
would have been well content to ' make a stand upon the 
ancient way.' 

The introductory lecture to the 18th and 19th centuries 
may fairly deal with a variety of general considerations. It 
might be remarked that the reason why the period is dull to 
the student of constitutional history is because the striking 
facts of English history are no longer constitutional facts. The 
really great achievements of the 18th century are the industrial 
revolution and the establishment of a world empire beyond 
sea. The vital matters do not fall within the province of the 
historian of the constitution ; they belong rather to the econo- 
mist and the historian of foreign policy, and particularly of war. 
It should be noted that before the Reform Bill the English 
system is in the main aristocratic, and an attempt should be 
made to bring out the importance of the House of Lords in the 
political organisation, and the predominating influence of 
individual peers in the composition of the House of Commons. 
Last of all it should be shewn that what Gneist calls the 'cen- 
tury of Reform and Reform Bills' was inaugurated by an 
economic and social change, when the rural England of the 
17th century, controlled by the country gentry, became the 
industrial England of the early 19th century, controlled by 
employers and capitalists. Great towns, as a picturesque 
French writer puts it, 'shot up and spread with the rapidity of 
a conflagration, shooting up like flames, and tending ever to 
engulf each other 1 .' The political centre of gravity shifted 
from the south to the north, and it became inevitable that a 
constitution which made no provision for the new industrial 

1 Boutmy, The English Constitution, p. 185. A note refers to a phrase 
by Leon Faucher in his Etudes sur FAngleterre: 'Croissent comme la 
flamme et ne cessent de tendre vers un abime de grandeur.' 



The Teaching of Constitutional History. 65 

England should undergo modification. The wonder is not 
that this was done, but that it was done without a revolution. 

Such general considerations as these gain greatly in the 
force and effectiveness of their presentation if they are ex- 
pounded in special introductory lectures, instead of being 
wedged among masses of detail, or appearing from time to 
time as a digression from the history of particular institutions. 
In constitutional history the danger of losing sight of the 
general in the particular is a real one, and if it can be avoided, 
even at the risk of repetition, the price is not too high. 

What has been said of the teacher's method may perhaps 
be conveniently supplemented at this point by a brief account 
of the method recommended to the student. One of the 
virtues most to be desired of him is orderliness ; another is 
the power of seeing things in due proportion, and so of 
escaping the danger which besets those who lose themselves 
in detail, and fail to see the wood for the trees. A third is the 
power of getting at the heart of a book without reading every 
word of it, but to this beginners should not aspire. " Some 
books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few 
to be chewed and digested : that is, some books are to be read 
only in parts ; others to be read, but not curiously ; and some 
few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention 1 ." But 
except for the fortunate possessors of Macaulay's memory, 
what may be called arm-chair reading is, as a rule, worse 
than useless. The student of history must work pen in hand. 
It is perhaps best to begin with the largest possible note-book, 
and enter in it either lecture notes or an analysis of a principal 
text-book, writing only on one side of the page, and leaving 
large spaces even there. This gives a general plan of the 
subject, and into this general plan the results of the subsequent 
reading should be worked — as analysis, or extracts, or refer- 
ences. Thus into this note-book the fruits of all the student's 
labours will be garnered, and when the time comes for reviewing 
1 Bacon, Essays Civil and Moral, L. 'Of Studies.' 

A. 5 



66 The Teaching of Constitutional History. 

what has been learned, there will be found within its covers all 
the materials for an orderly revision of the subject. Memory 
is a good thing, but unless the memory is exceptional, method 
is better. The man who knows everything is a rare product of 
education, and after all he is not much better off than the man 
who knows where everything is to be found. Accurate knowledge 
of causes and results in general is most often attained by the 
student who takes the trouble to sort and arrange his details. 
With rare exceptions the arm-chair reader is inaccurate both in 
the general and in the particular. His memory is overburdened 
with details, and he has no general plan. 

It would be rash to formulate an iron rule of method, for 
there are those who thrive on a habit of inspired disorder; 
but for the average man it is good that he should apply business 
principles to his work. And for the orderly arrangement of 
topics a printed syllabus has been found invaluable. One of 
the lecturers on early constitutional history at Cambridge has 
been accustomed to furnish his class with two thirty-two page 
pamphlets, the first covering the ground to a.d. 12 15 and the 
second from a.d. 12 15 to a.d. 1485. These include a list of 
books recommended, a statement of the subject-matter of each 
lecture, and short paragraphs on points of special difficulty, 
with abundant references to the best sources of information. A 
lecturer on later constitutional history adopts a less ambitious 
plan, and confines himself to some twenty pages, but he also 
provides a list of books recommended and a scheme of each 
lecture. 

Another feature of history-teaching in Cambridge is the 
series of weekly or fortnightly papers or essays set by each 
lecturer in connection with his class. These essays are not 
compulsory, but in a class of 45 or 50 members as many as 25 
or 30 will write them. The lecturer looks over the essays 
beforehand, and then meets the writers privately, in groups of 
three or four, for criticism and discussion. Not many have the 
genius for this kind of oral teaching which is required to 



The Teaching of Constitutional History. 67 

produce the best results, but at the worst it is valuable for 
purposes of revision, and it is not difficult to make it some- 
thing more. Fresh problems may be introduced, and docu- 
ments may be dealt with more thoroughly than is possible 
under the formal conditions of the lecture-room. The 
statutes of the Reformation Parliament, the history of the 
Dissolution of the Monasteries, the importance of the State 
Trials in the constitutional history of the 17th century, are 
subjects which cannot be adequately treated in lecture because 
the time available is not sufficient, but they can be made to 
serve for the conversation class. The history of the Star 
Chamber is generally misunderstood by the average student, 
and it is convenient to have an opportunity of revising it. A 
comparison between the political ideas of Pym and Shaftesbury, 
or of Strafford and Cromwell, though open to the charge of 
irrelevance, has been found to be stimulating. It is more 
difficult to justify a digression on literary style. But experience 
clearly shows that in most cases the time thus spent is spent to 
advantage. The system encourages wider interests, sounder 
knowledge, and a more chastened style of expression. And 
this is in spite of the fact that here the Cambridge teacher 
labours under a special disadvantage. Since history-lecturing 
is intercollegiate — and this is to be defended on almost every 
other ground — he is at close quarters with an alien folk who 
belong to other Colleges, and with them constitutional history 
is his only point of contact. His relations with these are 
pleasant enough, and he may make a few friends among them, 
but he does not acquire the intimate personal knowledge of 
the individual which is an important element in successful oral 
teaching. The criticism tends to be too polite, and it takes 
too long to establish the necessary moral ascendency. 

English constitutional history for the Historical Tripos is 
treated in two academical years, and some 70 lectures are 
allowed to each half of the subject. But mention should 
also be made of a short course of 15 lectures on comparative 

5— 2 



68 The Teaching of Constitutional History. 

constitutions, which deals with the structure of different modern 
forms of government and their manner of working. In this 
course the English constitution is treated first ; but the order of 
treatment is logical rather than historical, and stress is laid on 
those features which suggest comparisons and contrasts with 
the institutions of other States, as for instance, the legal 
omnipotence of the British Parliament or the English form 
of Cabinet government as compared with foreign imitations of 
it. The constitution of the United States of America is studied 
next, as the type of the maturer form of federal government, 
and such points are emphasised as the checks imposed on the 
will of the numerical majority, the comparatively independent 
position of the Federal and State executives, the relation of the 
Federal judiciary to the political departments of government, 
the rights of individuals which are guaranteed by the Constitu- 
tion, and the committee system of legislation. The more 
advanced students are also encouraged to grapple with such 
thorny questions as the true seat of American sovereignty and 
the legal aspect of secession. The more notable of the modern 
French constitutions are next compared ; what is native and 
fundamental in them is distinguished from what is accidental or 
the result of conscious imitation ; and the significance of recent 
developments is explained. Attention is also given to such 
problems as the anomalous position of the President as head 
of the Executive, elected and at the same time irresponsible ; 
the modern working of the principle of 'separation of powers'] 
the effect of the 'group' system in weakening Parliamentary 
government; and the extent and character of French centrali- 
sation. The constitutions of the German Empire and Switzer- 
land are also dealt with on the same scale ; the rest only for 
purposes of illustration and comparison, and to show the drift 
of modern constitutional changes. For students who have 
already worked at English constitutional history this course 
has been found of considerable use. 



THE TEACHING OF HISTORY IN 
SCHOOLS— AIMS. 

In the teaching of History we are, we may assume, dis- 
pensed from the need of asking a question obviously required 
in the case of Mathematics or Classics, the question, namely, 
whether we urge its claims on the ground of the value of the 
subject for its own sake as information, or on the ground of 
its worth as intellectual and moral discipline. The function of 
the teacher of History in providing knowledge useful to the 
learner is by me taken for granted : this essay deals with the 
more strictly educational aims which may guide those who, in 
teaching the subject, desire to keep before themselves definite 
ends as the necessary basis of right methods. 

Now a school subject, apart from its relation to the utilities 
of life, may primarily be chosen for its aid in training intellec- 
tual faculty, e.g. Geometry, or taste, e.g. Literature or Drawing. 
But there are broader ends still which may be applied as tests 
in the estimate of educational values. Perhaps we may say 
that a subject makes its strongest claims to a place in a school 
course, when it not only increases knowledge and exercises 
mental faculty, but when it stimulates interest in larger views of 
life and action, and provides the continuance of that interest 
when the initiative of the teacher is withdrawn. History does 
all this. It has the merit that applications of its lessons are 
always ready to hand: unlike Chemistry, it needs no laboratory, 
unlike Geometry, its interest is never merely technical. It 



JO The Teaching of History in Schools — A ims. 

shares with Literature and Philosophy the highest intellectual 
and moral attractiveness, in dealing with subject-matter of 
perennial concern to human life and motive. 

It is necessary, next, to distinguish the elements of our 
intellectual faculty with which History has chiefly to do. We 
are all aware that our own earliest interest in History was 
nothing but an unconscious extension of our interest in story- 
telling. The most enduring historical acquisitions we have 
made are those early stories of the Old Testament, of Greece, 
Rome and England which came to each of us, originally, before 
History as a subject concerned us at all. The reason why they 
have thus survived lies in the fact that such stories appealed to 
our imagination, satisfied it, and stimulated it to dwell with 
pleasure on their repetition. This fitness of the story to the 
childish mind depended, no doubt, partly on its Old World 
simplicity, on its balance, perhaps on its striking literary form. 
But the essential factor in the appeal of narrative to the young 
is its quality of imaginative stimulus. History then begins by 
being, and ought always on certain sides of it to continue to 
be, an exercise of constructive imagination. 

In the earliest stage of History teaching the aim is just 
this : to arouse the class to realise in mental picture the action, 
scene and character presented by the subject chosen: just as, 
in a much later stage, the same capacity for realising the 
emotions called into play by the great formative ideas of social 
organisation is essential to comprehending their force. The 
difference between a lesson that becomes knowledge, and one 
that does not, lies partly, at any rate, in the vividness of 
imagination which has been brought into activity in the course 
of it. Nor may we expect, in the case of younger scholars, 
that the learner will be able to bring this imaginative faculty 
to bear, unless the teacher directly arouses it. The book will 
not arouse it, such a book, I mean, as any class is able to use. 
Hence we touch at once upon the primary function of the 
History teacher in the elementary stages ; he must teach and 



The Teaching of History in Schools — A ims. 7 1 

not merely hear a lesson. The latter may conduce to exercise 
of memory, but never of imagination. Voice, manner, fertility 
of illustration, unconscious emphasis, instinctive knowledge of 
the child's familiarity with action and with moral qualities, the 
constant testing of the ground, the imaginative insight into the 
subject dealt with — all these the teacher has and the book 
cannot have: these make the teacher. Thus we notice that the 
teacher's imagination forms the dominant factor here. Masters 
are apt to say that they cannot teach History to very young 
children : in that these have so little power of taking in facts 
that are outside their experience. It is meant, to put it into 
other words, that children have so little imagination. But the 
true reason is that the Master has so little; and that, again, 
means that he has not exercised it, and has not supplied it with 
proper, and with sufficient, material. For a ready yet truthful 
imagination demands fulness of material, much more than does 
a mere memory. For we need to play with our subject, to feel 
instinctively the analogies and the contrasts that it admits of, 
so to be able to express it in rapidly sketched pictures, with 
emphasis and proportion true to realities. 

In preparing any lesson the teacher thus has more to do 
than to make sure of the actual facts with which it deals. He 
must seize the points which these may offer, or be made to offer, 
for clear and precise word-pictures. In the youngest classes, 
matter which does not readily lend itself to this treatment 
should be at once avoided as unsuitable. Characters, whose 
broad lines of good and bad qualities are easily recognisable, 
incidents of romantic sort — material which we find more 
frequently in the earlier stages of history — are naturally first 
chosen. But we should notice that all 'good' qualities do 
not appeal to the child : ascetic, contemplative, passive virtues 
make little impression. The instinct of the child's moral 
nature, as of his physical, is towards action. It is true that 
imagination is aroused by contrasts with daily experience, 
rather than by similarities, but this contrast must be sought in 



72 The Teaching of History in Schools — Aims. 

the surroundings and in the larger scale of the activity: not in 
the selection of types of life and conduct which are outside the 
range of a child's sympathies. The same is true of events. 
Unfamiliarity is the surest means of rousing interest, but the 
imagination will only be fruitfully exercised if the new matter is 
brought home by being put into some relation with what is 
already known. Without that, too great strain is placed upon 
the constructive faculty, and like a clumsy description in a 
book of travel the lesson fails to suggest any mental picture 
at all. 

The teacher's imagination, then, must be alert. It must, in 
the next place, be restrained. The question arises in connec- 
tion with stories avowedly unhistorical. We cannot possibly 
eliminate them from teaching. But the imagination is not to 
be let loose because we are no longer on the hard ground of 
fact. The teacher must stick to the myth. In treating the 
narrative of events the same restraint is needed, in omitting 
pictures or images which are out of all useful relation to the 
scholar's capacity. It is, for instance, of no avail to force 
imaginative conceptions of abstract ideas: feudalism, empire, 
autonomy, and the like. 

Beginners are best relieved of any attempt to grasp social 
or political organisation. It is an utter mistake to 'start with 
the concrete,' in the sense in which some writers on historical 
method have advocated it. There is nothing which appeals 
to the imagination in the 'policeman,' the 'juryman,' the 
'magistrate,' or the 'mayor' (qua mayor); and to try to rise from 
such 'concrete instances' to conceptions of 'Order,' 'Govern- 
ment,' 'Law' and 'Kingship' is perfectly futile. A teacher may 
in this manner get in a certain amount of useful information, 
but it will prove uninteresting, and it is therefore premature. 
The teacher, knowing the imaginative value to himself of these 
outward emblems of national polity, may fancy that he can 
stimulate his class to an equal interest. But he must re- 
member that his imaginative faculty, with its wide resources of 



The Teaching of History in Schools — Aims. 73 

fact, is no criterion of the strength of that of his scholars, and 
that, to be a trustworthy guide, it must be kept in constant re- 
straint during a lesson. In reality ideas are unsuited for teaching 
purposes in case of the very young. 'The King' is abstract : 
William I. is concrete: the first will fail as an exercise of 
imagination, the other will succeed. 'Law' as an abstract 
authority is unintelligible to children, who will however readily 
understand the Forest Law of the Conqueror. 

It will be asked at this point: "How far does this method 
of teaching aim at laying the foundations of subsequent study 
of the subject?" The reply is, that the truest preparation for 
future progress does not consist in imparting a body of know- 
ledge, which will save time at a later stage, but in inspiring 
a taste, and in training the necessary intellectual faculty, for 
further acquisition. The actual retention of a number of facts 
and dates is, no doubt, usefully secured as early as possible. 
But this is only a minor service, when done. It will be of far 
greater importance to have stimulated interest in the historic 
past, and to have developed a power of seeing its incidents in 
clear-cut mental pictures. 

The distinction between a logical and a psychological 
method of treating a subject of instruction is not without special 
helpfulness in considering methods of History teaching. Where 
a subject lends itself to so much variety of approach, we may 
fairly adopt the avenue which leads straight to the learner's 
interest. The teacher then is not concerned with the logical 
order of the material, but with its affinity to the child-mind. 
At this stage relative importance of historical subject-matter for 
teaching purposes is determined by the appeal it makes to the 
child's imagination, not by intrinsic value. 

In a broad sense Patriotism rests partly on carefully- 
restrained appeals to imagination ; and I know of no reason 
why this may not form a definite end of the teaching of History 
almost from the beginning. The love of country and pride in 
it may be allowed to precede the sense of duty to one's 



74 The Teaching of History in Schools — Aims. 

country. Citizenship — one concrete side of Patriotism — is a 
conception to be slowly won at a much later period. But the 
germs of patriotic feeling must be planted by the agency of the 
imaginative faculty, and indeed it can never be wholly inde- 
pendent of it. 

It will follow from what has been urged so far that the 
most profitable material for the first stages of History teaching 
will be found in primitive, rather than in modern, periods. In 
its appeal to children, a childlike age of humanity is more 
successful than its complex manhood. Hence the supreme 
interest of the stories of the Old Testament, of early Greece 
and Rome. The simplicity of ideas, the predominance of the 
elementary moral qualities, the importance of the individual, 
all render the pictures of early History intelligible to the young. 
There are, of course, admirable instances in our own History. 
But the old practice of teaching ancient story rather than 
modern had its basis in sound educational theory. 

The second chief function in the disciplinary use of History 
is that of introducing the growing mind to reflection upon 
cause and effect in human affairs : in other words, that of 
training the reasoning faculty. It is one of the aims of teaching 
in all subjects to substitute in the growing mind rational asso- 
ciations of ideas for arbitrary ones. That William I. succeeded 
Harold II. may be remembered by arbitrary association, if it is 
a matter of mere verbal memory of names and dates : by 
rational association, the actual fact is seen to be the result of 
a number of antecedents which can be taught and grasped. 
The importance to memory of such higher associations needs 
not to be pointed out. This may help the Master to determine 
the method of teaching facts and dates : if he can, let the 
relation of cause and effect be first understood, then the se- 
quence of events, being now necessary, is remembered without 
effort. 

The capacity for looking for, and estimating, the right 
sequence of events can be trained from an early age : cruelty 



The Teaching of History in Schools — Aims. 75 

induces revenge, bad rule, rebellion. Naturally the power 
comes into play when a fuller knowledge of facts has been 
acquired. But the Master can help his class in marking out 
the clear line of development in his subject and in freeing the 
main thread of causation from episodes and side issues; obscure 
and unrelated connections will be discarded, and the class 
taught to follow out the successive links in the chain. The 
break up of the Athenian Empire or the revolt of the American 
Colonies afford obvious examples of matter suitable for the 
specific teaching of cause and effect in affairs. Moral causation 
will not less easily be inculcated. The rigid self-discipline of 
the Spartan State and its consequences in the place of Lace- 
daemon in Greece, contrasted with the degeneracy of the 
Persian monarchy and its collapse. So too the story of 
Ethelred, or of Richard II., or of France in the 18th century 
exhibit instances of the effects of moral decline. 

The comparative method, which I would advocate even 
from the beginning, will enable a teacher to enforce these 
lessons by reference to analogies drawn from other histories. 
The Jews, the Greeks, the Romans and the English are avail- 
able for the purpose. The influence of character in causa- 
tion ; the inevitable march of revolution ; the forces working 
for national decline ; the effects of geography on national life, 
of commerce upon empire — every one of these central pheno- 
mena of History can only be securely taught when reasoning 
from one country to another is guided and filled out by the 
teacher. This is in no sense digression : it is utilising History 
as the finest instrument for reasoning upon human action. 

There is another aspect in which the reasoning faculty of a 
class may be stimulated and exercised by the judicious History 
Master. I am referring to the mental discipline afforded by 
the critical method : the estimate of the value of historical 
evidence. This involves reasoning on the general probability 
of facts as. recorded, and on the available knowledge or pre- 
sumable bias on the part of the historian. 



j6 The Teaching of History in Schools — Aims. 

To illustrate how far from difficult such an introduction to 
criticism in reality is, it may be worth while to instance an 
example which the writer has known to be worked out with 
a class of boys of 16 years old: Shakespeare's Henry VI., in 
relation to the life of Richard, Duke of Gloucester. It forms 
an easy and very effective study in the laws of historical credi- 
bility. The examination turns on (a) probability of facts, 
(b) bias of narrator ; the entire apparatus of criticism lies in 
small compass and is easily accessible. 

In the same way the value of the evidence of Herodotus or 
of Livy ; the allowance to be made for bias in Tacitus, In 
a modern American historian, or Mr Carlyle : all this is in 
upper Forms perfectly appropriate material for the training of 
the reasoning faculty. Jt is not of least importance that such 
critical enquiry introduces the young scholar to the habit — as 
difficult as it is valuable — of handling books with freedom and 
self-reliance. 

The third element of intellectual capacity which History 
brings into exercise is that of Judgment. The word is used 
rather loosely, but it is one for which we cannot well find 
a substitute. By 'practical judgment' I mean the faculty of 
estimating action (i) as regards the adjustment of means to 
ends, and (2) as regards its Tightness in the moral sphere. The 
first is insight into the action of a man, or of a body of men, or 
of the State as a whole, judging it in respect of its wisdom, 
skill, genius, as manifested in the choice and pursuit of certain 
ends. The second is the moral estimate of this action : or, as 
we usually speak of it under this aspect, Conduct. 

This quality of practical judgment here indicated is one 
which History pre-eminently cultivates. The great English 
masters of history, Arnold, Stubbs, Gardiner, have insisted on 
the virtue which goes forth from the earnest study of their 
subject in respect of the development of this capacity. 

History is the record of the action of men, guiding, and 
guided by, the operation of ideas more or less imperfectly 



The Teaching of History in Schools — Aims. yj 

grasped. But civilised men and States are always aiming at 
some object, which they have set before themselves, worthy or 
unworthy, avowed or secret. The study of History teaches us 
to disentangle these aims, to discern how they came to be 
sought and what means were devised to attain them. Now, as 
all life, individual or corporate, is the exhibition of this same 
effort at devising aims and at adjusting means to securing them, 
we are, in historical enquiry, on familiar ground. It is not here 
suggested that historical study serves peculiarly as training in 
judgment in the private or individual capacities of life. But 
the citizenship of a self-governing State demands the constant 
exercise of that judgment which History can best inform arid 
enlighten. For by it we consider the action of individuals — 
their skill, motives and ends ; by it we estimate the ideals and 
the policy of nations. The career of Pericles, of Caesar, of 
Charlemagne, wisely taught, will form admirable training in 
political judgment ; and, though the problem is more complex, 
so will the imperial policy of Athens, of Spain, or of England. 
Let it be understood that the work of the Master is not to 
frame and impart conclusions of his own, but to lead his class 
to distinguish such factors as are of crucial weight, and to 
estimate the limits within which judgments may be reasonably 
formed. The History lesson, then, is not only a series of 
mental pictures, not only a reasoned ordering of causes and 
results, but an attempt to view men and policies as complete 
wholes, with a view to a tentative verdict upon the skill and 
the moral sincerity which they exhibit. It is sometimes 
necessary, in such teaching, to discern between a man and his 
cause, to judge so carefully that our verdiGt is in favour of the 
one, but against the other: approving Demosthenes, but doubt- 
ful of his policy ; distrustful of Charles, but cherishing much 
that was unluckily identified with him. 

History read in this spirit may, as nothing else can, help to 
correct some inevitable tendencies of maturer youth: such as the 
habit of forming hard, uncompromising opinions. Judgment will 



j 8 The Teaching of History in Schools — Aims. 

imply charity and caution in riding pre-conceptions too hard. 
It will teach us to see something of the intangible forces that 
overrule personal preferences and hinder the direct application 
of principles sincerely held. The teacher will point out how 
good men, if weak, may do greater harm than worse men who 
are strong; how bad motives may somehow end in results 
which are for the welfare of the many. From him should pro- 
ceed the lesson that sweeping denunciations and wide moral 
generalisations are often false, and may merely cover up 
indolence in the search for truth, or the partiality of sectarian 
zeal. On such judgment as this, fortified by resources of clearly- 
reasoned facts, the true patriotic emotion may be based. To 
teach Citizenship as Herbert Spencer would have us do, turning 
our history lessons into descriptive sociology, will, we may con- 
fidently assume, prove a dismal failure. The way to the higher 
sense of patriotic duty does not lie through the enumeration 
and analysis of the specific forms which the duties of citizen- 
ship may take in actual life. Patriotism is a double obligation, 
a local and an imperial duty, and the stimulus to it must be 
first sought in the nobler emotions which revolve round 
inherited responsibilities. 

Throughout the school course in History, these would seem 
to be the special ends to be kept in view by a Master who 
desires to make of his subject a truly effective factor in intel- 
lectual development : the stimulation and exercise of imagina- 
tion, reasoning, judgment, and the patriotic sense. 



THE TEACHING OF HISTORY IN 
SCHOOLS— PRACTICE. 



History has obtained in English Schools within recent 
years a new importance. It no longer ranks amongst the 
voluntary 'extras' in the School curriculum. More time is 
given to its study ; it is recognised as having other functions 
in Education besides that of stocking the memory with useful 
information, and many Schools possess at least one Master 
who has had some Historical training at the University. 

Its place in Education however, though reconsidered, is 
not yet settled. At present there is no unanimity amongst the 
Theorists or the Teachers. There is no agreement as to what 
the aims in the teaching of History should be, or as to what 
History in Schools can or cannot do. Divergence of aim is 
partly responsible for the differences in the time allotted to 
History (varying from f of an hour a week in some Schools to 
five hours in the Modern and three in the Classical side at 
others), and also for the astonishing diversity in the methods 
employed in the Teaching. Every School is a law unto itself; 
and in most Schools every master may teach History in the 
way which seems to him to be best — or easiest. Such inde- 
pendence and variety has its advantages, and is consistent with 
the principles of English education. But as a consequence it 
is impossible for a writer on the Teaching of History to detail 
English methods as he would those of the Germans. The 



80 The Teaching of History in Schools — Practice* 

present writer therefore does not propose to give a complete 
account of History Teaching in Schools — that at present is 
impossible — nor to draw up elaborate schemes or dictate 
Methods. All he can do is to note deficiencies, to point 
out difficulties which he himself has met with, and to make 
suggestions as a result of his own experience and the ex- 
perience of others. 

First of all something must be said with regard to the general 
organization of History Teaching. 

A contrast might easily be drawn between the completeness 
of the German system and the incomplete arrangements of 
most English Schools. At present, however, the German 
system cannot be naturalised in England. At most, if not 
all, Schools the time allotted to History is insufficient; in 
some it is too absurdly inadequate to permit even important 
periods to be covered twice, which is one characteristic of 
the German system. Moreover, the lack of trained teachers 
makes the study of General History with the same elaborate- 
ness as in Germany quite impossible, and attempts made are 
apt to lead to a boy being crammed with masses of uncon- 
nected facts and names, or to an unintelligent reading of 
some universal History. And things being as they are, the 
present writer is not at all sure that in the higher forms, 
if a choice, from lack of time, has to be made, a detailed 
knowledge of one Period is not more valuable than a very 
slight acquaintance with a good many. 

But if under existing circumstances a big measure of reform 
is impossible, many amendments may at least be carried out. 
In some schools History is made subservient to Classics, 
and only Ancient History is taught in the top divisions; at 
others Ancient History is ignored in the Sixth Form. In some 
schools long and important Periods are left untouched: of 
nearly all it would be true to say that their teaching of Modern 
History is too insular, and ignores foreign countries. As a 
consequence, some boys do not possess even an acquaintance 



The Teaching of History in Schools — Practice. 81 

in dates with the Period which witnessed the decline of the 
Roman Empire ; and yet this is the Period which the greatest 
of English historians has made his own. Other boys are 
without any adequate or connected knowledge of the History 
of their own country, or of its Empire. Again, nearly all 
boys are extraordinarily ignorant of Foreign History; and 
that ignorance results in narrowness of view, and in an insular 
contempt of other nations which familiarity with their History 
would alone dispel. 

But it is easy to point out deficiencies ; it is a harder task 
to suggest remedies. Something may be done by a rearrange- 
ment of the Periods studied ; something to remedy gross 
ignorance by a book of dates ; History must cease to be 
regarded as the handmaid of Classics ; most important of all, 
more time must be given to History, and more teachers. 

So much may be said as to organisation ; and now some 
suggestions may be made as to the use of what may be termed 
the instruments in History Teaching — the Text-books, Illus- 
trations, Atlases. On one point teachers are agreed ; Text- 
books, except in teaching very small boys, are indispensable. 
The necessary facts — the Grammar — of History must be learnt 
by reading and not by hearing ; it is the business of the book 
to narrate, of the teacher to illustrate, explain, supplement. 
For English and for Ancient History there is an ever-increasing 
supply of Text-books for both small and big boys. For 
European History, it is harder to find suitable Text-books ; 
Freeman's General Sketch gives the elementary facts for young 
boys, and for more advanced students there are such books as 
Lodge's Modern Europe, the Periods of European History 
published by Messrs Rivington, and Macmillan's Foreign 
Statesmen Series. But good intermediate Text-books are 
still needed, though Longmans' Epoch Series is useful for 
special periods. 

In some schools, the younger boys are still the victims of 
abridgements; and we are not yet free from the traditional 
a. 6 



82 The Teaching of History in Schools — Practice. 

methods of those who abridge with the result that History, as 
a French writer has put it, appears as a series of wars, treaties, 
reforms, revolutions, differing only in the names of the peoples, 
sovereigns, fields of battle, and in the figures giving the year. 

To come to another subject — the part that illustrations 
should play in the Teaching of History. It is being more 
and more recognised that in education boys should learn, not 
only by reading and hearing, but also by observation. And in 
History especially a great deal can be taught by sight. The 
younger boys will receive a more definite, clear, and lasting 
impression from what they see, than either from what they read 
or from what they hear; with all boys illustrations will make 
History more real, and consequently more interesting ; and 
illustrations are not without their value in stimulating the 
imagination, and in making more keen the boy's power of 
observation. 

Moreover, of recent years a great deal has been done to 
supply illustrations. Some Text-books are filled with admirably 
chosen ones. Photographs of buildings, coins, engravings, 
can be had in plenty. Photographs of portraits are easily 
procurable, and though boys cannot judge character from 
them, yet a good portrait will enable them to realise that 
historical personages were real flesh and blood, and not remote 
beings ticketed with dates. The Germans, again, have pub- 
lished a collection of coloured pictures, in which striking events 
in History are reproduced with the most scrupulous fidelity. 
There is no difficulty in getting or making lantern-slides; some 
firms have very complete and elaborate collections ; and the 
present writer has found no difficulty in getting leave from 
publishers to make slides from pictures in books. The lantern 
can best illustrate campaigns, whether ancient or modern, on— 
sea or on land, whether they be those of Hannibal or Nelson. 
By its means the social life of a past epoch can most easily be 
realised. A series of pictures of the Roman Wall for instance 
will give a boy some notion of the greatness of the Roman 



The Teaching of History in Schools — Practice. 83 

Empire, and form an admirable introduction to its history. 
Slides showing Pompeii (as it was and as it is), Pompeian shops, 
the games of the circus, displays in the amphitheatre as illustrated 
by frescoes, reliefs, and coins, will give a boy some conception of 
its social life. To take but one other example of a different 
kiud. The British Museum authorities have just published a 
most interesting and well-chosen series of facsimiles of letters 
at a very moderate price. Some fiery notes of Henry VIII. 
written in the margin of a document of Latimer's, and con- 
temning his attack upon Purgatory, a page from Edward VI.'s 
diary about the conversion of his sister Mary, a letter of Mary 
Stuart to Elizabeth complaining of the rigour of her imprison- 
ment, a document signed by the English commanders after the 
defeat of the Armada, declaring that they would follow and 
pursue the enemy until they had left our shores, a page from 
the log of Ralegh's ship on his last voyage, it is such letters as 
these that excite in a boy that personal interest in historical 
characters without which History loses for the young its reality 
and its charm. Moreover it is by examining such letters that 
a boy may make his first approach to original documents, and 
learn that it is from thousands of manuscripts such as these 
that the historian must largely form his judgment of the men 
and events of a past age 1 . 

An Atlas of Historical Geography is of course an indis- 
pensable instrument in the teaching of History; indeed its 
necessity is so obvious, and by this time so generally 

1 The Art for Schools Association, Messrs Mansell & Co. of Oxford 
Street, and Messrs Spooner of the Strand have very large collections of 
photographs of buildings, pictures, portraits ; Messrs Newton & Co. and 
Messrs Philip & Son, both of Fleet Street, have varied series of lantern- 
slides, including slides from such books as the illustrated edition of Green's 
Short History, and Gardiner's Students' History ; specimens of some of the 
illustrations used abroad may be seen in the Museum of the Teachers' Guild 
of Gower Street, W.C. Schreiber's Atlas of Classical Antiquities for 
Ancient History, and Lavisse's Album Historique (4 volumes — Colin et 
Cie.) for Mediaeval and Modern History are excellent. 

6—2 



84 The Teaching of History in Schools — Practice. 

recognised, that it is superfluous to prove it. For English 
History, Gardiner's Atlas is excellent and quite adequate for 
most boys, and it does not neglect foreign countries ; but 
there is room for another which should contain more details 
and more Maps. In European History, there is the Oxford 
Historical Atlas, now in course of publication, which I have 
found most useful in teaching older boys. For Ancient 
History, Murray's new series of Maps is quite admirable. 
Teachers will, of course, find the elaborately detailed maps 
published in Germany most useful for themselves. 

Something must now be said of the methods of teaching. 
Foreigners tell us that in education, as in all else, we have no 
care for method. We certainly have not been drilled into 
the rigid and possibly mechanical system prescribed for the 
Continental Teacher. We are in favour of liberty and inde- 
pendence in teaching, and consequently there is every variety 
of method, both good and bad. That variety, even if it is 
undesirable, is unavoidable. The methods employed in teach- 
ing must largely depend upon the time allotted to History, 
and upon the knowledge, the character, and the experience of 
the particular teacher. 

In treating of method, it is necessary to make some division 
of the boys according to their ages. Of teaching in the pre- 
paratory stages — before a boy comes to a Public School — the 
present writer, having no practical experience, proposes to say 
nothing. 

With regard to Public Schools, boys in the Lower Forms 
must learn the main facts in the chief periods, and provided 
that the dates are supplied in reasonable quantities a boy from 
13 to 15 has no very special horror of them; he prefers the 
facts to be put in a concise and definite form ; and he can learn 
them with less difficulty then than at any later period of his. 
existence. For the learning of dates the writer has no new 
suggestion ; some teachers exercise their ingenuity in making 
rhymes and puzzles, and provided that they are not so ingenious 



The Teaching of History in Schools — Practice. 85 

as to confuse, and yet ingenious enough to please the boys, they 
may be of use. For the supply of dates some have suggested 
a short book of a few pages, containing the chief dates, names 
and facts of History to be learnt like a Grammar, and to be in 
use throughout a school. Others — and probably this is better — 
have a more graduated list, containing a list of dates for the 
younger boys: for those higher up the original dates in big 
type, supplemented by others in smaller type; for those at the 
top a still larger list. Even an acquaintance merely in dates 
with great events and great men is better than complete 
ignorance. Boys when they are young should also possess 
some time-chart of the World's History to enable them to 
measure the periods of time covered, the comparative length of 
Ancient, Mediaeval and Modern History, and to realise even 
vaguely the "Unity of History." The History of each country 
or people in teaching the younger boys must be treated 
separately, and isolated ; but as a consequence boys fail, for 
instance, to connect in time the History of Greece and Rome, 
or events in English History with great events abroad. They 
altogether fail to appreciate the length of the early periods in 
the world's history 1 . 

In the actual teaching, most would agree that the periods 
with boys in the Lower Forms should be done quickly, the 
great object being to cover the chief epochs in outline ; that 
the ordinary teaching must consist in explaining and supple- 
menting the text-book ; that viva voce questions should be 
asked, if not so systematically as in Germany, at all 
events with great frequency and with some method. With 
regard to written questions, a number of short questions on 
the text-book involving written answers of three or four lines 
may help a boy to read a book intelligently, and shorter 

1 A recent writer has suggested a 'line of time' which each boy can 
make for himself, the scale being two inches to 500 years, and the periods, 
events, and dates can be filled in at discretion. It will please a boy's 
ingenuity to make such a line and to place a date 'in scale' accurately. 



86 The Teaching of History in Schools — Practice. 

questions with almost monosyllabic answers may teach him 
accuracy. The American 'recitation' might be of great value in 
teaching a boy not only History, but also how to connect his 
ideas and give a clear narrative when he is standing on his legs. 
A great deal may be done by black-board illustration 1 . 

At the same time it must be remembered that boys at 
that age are learning grammar in Latin, Greek, French ; their 
History should stimulate and interest as well as inform. It 
does not interest lower boys to show how the control of the 
purse-strings affected the power of the House of Commons, 
or to follow closely the relations between the Stuarts and their 
Parliaments. But they are keenly interested in fighting, they 
like to know how battles were lost and won, they love to 
make maps and plans. They are hero-worshippers and like 
biography. Lectures should be given occasionally dealing in 
detail with particular wars or biographies. A life of Hannibal 
if they are doing Roman History, of Ralegh if they are studying 
Elizabeth's reign, the history of the long bow and its victories 
for the earlier wars with France, of the three-decker for the 
later wars, will be a refreshing break from lists of dates and 
kings, wars and treaties, and will teach them as much history. 

In the higher forms of schools (including roughly boys 
from 1 6 to 19) the teaching of History changes its character. 
It is in these forms that boys learn that History is not a fortui- 
tous concourse of facts and events but must be studied in 
connexion with cause and effect, and that they must use their 
reasoning powers as well as their memory in order to understand 
it. From this time the oral teaching becomes of more importance 
than the text-book. After all the best of text-books will by 
itself teach but little History. A boy might know his text-book 
by heart, and yet have but a small acquaintance with the 
period which the book is supposed to cover. It is the teacher — 
before a boy can read much for himself — who must generalise 

1 Mr Somervell has given some ingenious examples of this method of 
teaching in a book called Teaching and Organisation. 



The Teaching of History in Schools — Practice. 87 

from and analyse facts ; who must give his judgment on men 
and events ; who must explain causes and estimate effects ; 
and who must stimulate and give the real guidance. The oral 
teaching should now begin to take the form of a lecture ; the 
text-book need not be followed, and the History should be 
taught by subjects. 

The boy must learn how to take notes on Lectures. In 
beginning a boy is apt to put down the unessential or to leave 
out what is necessary ; a virtuous boy is apt to measure his 
virtue by the number of pages covered, and to spread over 
10 pages what he might easily have compressed into 3; if he is 
very virtuous he may follow the example of the Cambridge 
young lady in whose note-book appeared the opening words of 
the lecturer, "Last time I began by saying." But a boy soon 
learns to have an eye for the chief points, will not waste words, 
will use abbreviations, will not forget quotations or illustrations, 
and will know what to neglect. In lecturing on English 
History to large classes at the top of the school, the present 
writer has found it a great advantage to prepare a printed 
Syllabus for circulation amongst the boys which contains the 
outline of the Lecture and the chief facts, tables of dates and 
genealogies, quotations from contemporary writers and from 
modern historians, short lists of books, and blank pages for 
the boy to take notes. Such a syllabus saves the Lecturer 
much dictation and the boys much mechanical note-taking, 
and is of service for reference, whilst the boys appreciate the 
quotations, and the blank pages enable them to take notes 
quickly without the necessity of a note-book 1 . 

Though, however, the teaching should be mainly by lectur- 
ing it should not be wholly so. Viva voce questions must be 
asked continually, to see whether the boys have understood, 
remembered, attended, and in order that they may themselves 
suggest where possible the causes or results of a particular 

1 Copies of these Syllabuses may be obtained from Messrs Spottiswoode 
and Co., Eton College. 



88 The Teaching of History in Schools — Practice. 

event or policy ; and even the dignity of a Sixth Form boy may 
be occasionally startled by a question of a very elementary or 
very recondite nature. Numerous explanations, digressions, 
illustrations may prevent note-taking becoming mechanical ; 
and more especially the boy should write answers to questions. 

It is now, if not before, that the questions set not only test 
a boy's knowledge but his ability, not only his facts and dates 
but his capacity to use them, argue from them, interpret them. 
It is extraordinary how difficult some boys at first find it to 
answer questions which demand the use of their reason as well 
as their memory. They will for instance give a good account 
of the Civil War with many details ; but any question which 
involves the use and not a mere statement of the facts makes 
them helpless. They can, as they express it, "write out" a 
reign or a life, but any question asking what claims a man has 
to be considered a great Statesman or a great General will 
produce either great quantities of fluent nonsense or an alarm- 
ing mass of very solid narrative. A boy should be able to 
write an answer in a limited time in which facts should be used 
to illustrate points or support arguments, which should keep to 
the question and be well arranged, and which should be withal 
forcibly and brightly expressed. That is the ideal ; it would 
be absurd of course to say that all or even most boys attain to 
it. Some boys cannot pick out easily what they want from a 
heap of material ; others find it difficult to keep to the point, 
and will sometimes write an answer which has but a remote 
connexion with the question, or will fly off at a tangent half- 
way through the answer. Some will use slang when they try 
to be forcible, and scatter epithets with no discretion when 
they wish to write well ; the answers of others never succeed in 
escaping the charge of dulness. But all boys will improve with 
practice, and this practice affords a most valuable training. 

One or two other points may be noticed. Boys in the 
higher forms might do historical essays, and for these they 
should be encouraged to read larger books, the subjects of 



The Teaching of History in Schools — Practice. 89 

course being selected with a view to interest, and so set as to 
allow of some originality of treatment. Moreover they should 
be introduced to the works of the great historians ; in the 
middle forms this can best be done by reading out passages — 
a scene from Froude, a description from Macaulay, a chapter 
of some biography will give boys a prospect of the future de- 
lights of History ; in the higher forms the boys should be 
urged to read for themselves. Some attempt ought to be 
made to take in detail some Period either in Ancient or English 
History, tracing not only its political but also the economic, 
constitutional, social and literary History. The Oxford and 
Cambridge Certificate Examination requires a Period to be 
thus studied. For at least one term in the year European 
History should be studied, and clever boys take to Political 
Science without any difficulty. 

It is easy enough, however, to make suggestions; it is 
impossible to adopt them unless more time is devoted in most 
schools to History, and, what is equally important, allowed to 
the teacher for preparation. In the sixth form for instance of 
most public schools where from one to one and a half hours in a 
week is devoted to History, it is difficult to find time to do more 
than ask short questions from the text-book, to Lecture and set 
very occasionally a paper ; moreover if the boys are specialists 
in classics they have little opportunity for historical reading, 
and no time to do essays. At some schools the difficulty of 
time is partly solved in the higher forms by making History an 
optional subject amongst many others, one of which must be 
taken, and boys who are interested in History can choose it 
as their subject. 

Finally something may be said of the Specialists, of boys, 
who though they may not have given up classics are reading 
for scholarships, or have settled to read History at the Univer- 
sities, and so in their last year make History their first subject. 
With the latter class, the teacher has a free hand; he is not 
limited by examinations, and his only object is to teach them to 



90 The Teaching of History in Schools — Practice. 

read history intelligently and to give them a solid foundation to 
build upon later. An attempt may be made to give these 
boys a clear outline of English History and if possible of 
some foreign period ; they should read " general " books, the 
works of such writers as Bagehot, Dicey, Seeley, Maine ; they 
should also write more elaborate essays than the ordinary boy 
has time to do ; and above all, they should be carefully taught 
the proper methods of Historical study, so that they may not — 
as so many do — lose time when they reach the University. 
But a promising boy, at that age, if too young to form 
judgments, will at any rate possess prejudices. He will take 
interest in, and show enthusiasm for, particular periods or 
particular men. He should be encouraged to read as much 
and as deeply as possible on a subject which interests him, 
and may be introduced to the original authorities. Happy 
indeed is the teacher who has many such boys. There can be 
no more delightful task than stimulating and directing the 
enthusiasm of a youthful historian. 

A word may be said in conclusion as to History Scholar- 
ships. It is well to remember that the Examinations at Oxford 
and Cambridge differ in their demands, and that the character 
and interests of a boy must largely determine for which Uni- 
versity he should be a candidate. Cambridge examinations 
demand a wide knowledge ; at one college there are papers on 
the World's history, on the whole of English History, on the 
History of Political Government, and on a foreign period, and 
in each paper eight out of the twelve questions have to be 
answered. The questions present no great difficulty if the 
facts are familiar. At Oxford on the other hand it is better to 
possess a detailed knowledge of one period than a superficial 
acquaintance with a great many; only five or six out of twelve 
questions need be answered, but they necessitate more than 
a text-book acquaintance with a subject; great stress is laid on 
the general papers in which questions are set on all subjects, 
from Art to Political Economy, and on the essay ; and a boy 



The Teaching of History in Schools — Practice. 91 

maybe helped materially by his classics. 'Spes non res' is the 
Oxford motto, and the answers are judged, perhaps in a 
greater degree than at Cambridge, not only by the knowledge 
displayed, but by their arrangement and arguments, their style 
and attractiveness. 

But the number of pages allotted to this Chapter is already 
exceeded. The claims of History are still matter of debate, 
but the present writer has no doubt that History will fill a 
larger place in education in the future than it does now. For 
History in schools may not only provide boys with information 
" which is part of the apparatus of a cultivated life," but should 
do something to stimulate the imagination of the young, to 
develop the reason of those who are older, possibly to train the 
judgment of a few in the Highest Forms. It may extend the 
mental horizon of all. It may and should provoke patriotism 
and enthusiasm; it should help to train the Citizen or the 
Statesman ; its study should lead to right feeling and to right 
thinking. Yet a teacher who has all or some of these aims 
will frequently be dissatisfied with himself and his methods, 
and will be conscious more often of failure than of success. 
But that is the lot of all who teach. Some satisfaction may 
be obtained if one succeeds in preparing a boy to read History 
for himself and to appreciate its lessons in after-life. 



THE TEACHING OF HISTORY 
IN AMERICA. 

To give anything like a complete account of the historical 
teaching in American universities would be an exceedingly 
difficult, if not impossible, undertaking. For the individualism 
which characterises the political and economic life of the 
United States marks also their educational activity; and it has 
produced a bewildering congeries of institutions, all exercising 
the power of conferring academic degrees, but exhibiting in 
their standards an incomparably wider diversity than can be 
found in any of the countries of Europe. It is true that some 
even of the smallest of these institutions are doing excellent 
work. They often provide opportunities for a higher culture to 
"constituencies" which, from want of means, inadequate pre- 
vious education or religious prejudice, would be kept away 
from the greater universities. In judging of them it is not 
always possible to separate provincial ignorance from local 
patriotism or sectarian jealousy from self-denying zeal. Still this 
state of things makes it peculiarly hard to generalize. "Courses 
of instruction," which on paper look very much alike, may in 
actual practice be separated by the whole gamut of possible 
difference,— at the one end a quite Teutonic Griindlichkeit, at 
the other the unintelligent reproduction of ill-chosen text-books. 
And, if one surveys the whole field of American education, these 
standards will be found to shade into one another by in- 
sensible gradations. This helps to explain what at first seems so 



The Teaching of History in A merica. 93 

curious to the European scholar who joins the staff of a famous 
American university: the absence of sharp lines of demar- 
cation, and the kindly tolerance which his colleagues display 
towards institutions which he is inclined to dismiss with con- 
tempt. Their attitude has this further justification, that the 
tendency is now quite distinctly in the direction of improve- 
ment all round. Every year more and more of those men, 
who after graduating at a small institution have benefited by a 
period of further study at one of the greater centres of learning, 
are returning to teach in their old colleges with new scientific 
aspirations and new criteria of excellence. The process of 
levelling-up has grave obstacles to overcome, but it is making 
way. 

The other difficulty in the way of generalisation is the 
remarkable variety in the forms of academic organisation to be 
found even among institutions of the first rank. The foreign 
observer is not only perplexed by such differences of custom 
and nomenclature as inevitably grow up in course of time, such 
for instance as may be found between Oxford and Cambridge; 
he is struck by the juxtaposition of terms which seem to 
belong to different national systems, — by the way, for instance, 
in which "freshmen" and "bachelors" and "marks" jostle 
against "Ph. D's" and "Seminaries," and even "Semesters" and 
"Docents." The clue to the maze is furnished by American 
college history. All the older American universities were 
originally colleges of the English type. I imagine that a traveller 
last century would have found little noticeable difference be- 
tween the studies and modes of life in Emmanuel College, 
Cambridge, and in her great daughter, Harvard College, in 
Massachusetts. But when, soon after the great war was over 
in 1815, America was visited by the stirrings of new intellectual 
interests, it was to Germany that her young scholars all turned 
for instruction and inspiration. They went to Gottingen and 
Heidelberg, and returned with German conceptions of what 
a "University" should mean. The result was an attempt, in 



94 The Teaching of History in America. 

more than one instance, to place on top of the old-fashioned 
college of English type, a professorial university of the German 
pattern. The movement was perhaps premature at the time ; 
but it was revived and carried much further when the second 
great wave of enthusiasm for the higher learning broke over 
America in the years that immediately followed 1870. And 
now the matter of university organisation is no longer a sub- 
ject chiefly of theoretic interest to a few isolated scholars. 
The development of the country in population, wealth, social 
complexity and intellectual needs has brought "the faculty" of 
every considerable institution face to face with the two funda- 
mental problems of academic policy. These are, in the first 
place, how to construct a curriculum for the ordinary student 
which shall combine scope for individual powers, and regard 
for the needs of the modern world with the claims of literary 
culture; and, secondly, how to reconcile the business of 
instruction in what is already known with the salutary impulse 
towards further investigation. Thanks partly to the mechani- 
cal genius of the American people, which makes all questions 
of method so exceedingly— one is sometimes inclined to think, 
excessively — interesting to them, these two problems are now 
being confronted with a pretty clear consciousness of their 
importance and of their interconnection. Ultimately, no doubt, 
a definite type of American university will be arrived at, 
appropriate to a modern industrial society. Meanwhile, the 
American college is in the experimental stage ; and no one set 
of requirements for degrees, no one line of demarcation between 
"university" and "college," or between graduate and under- 
graduate studies, can be regarded as more obviously likely to 
prevail than any other of the half-dozen other experiments 
which are being tried elsewhere. 

In spite of all these diversities, however, there are still a 
certain number of the larger features of academic life which are 
common to all the greater universities ; and these I shall now 
attempt to set forth. I shall naturally enough have Harvard 



The Teaching of History in America. 95 

mainly in my mind as I go along ; but although that oldest of 
American colleges has some marked peculiarities of its own, 
a word of caution here and there may suffice to prevent any 
serious misapprehension. 

The most striking feature in the educational system of the 
American university is, I am inclined to think, the prominence 
of the "course." A "course" consists, in most places, of two 
or three hours of instruction per week, given most commonly 
by means of lectures, and running right through the academic 
year, together with prescribed reading and mid-year and final 
yearly examinations upon both reading and lectures. The 
same amount of work extending over only half the year, — 
the academic year is commonly divided into halves, — con- 
stitutes a "half-course"; and the like designation is sometimes 
given to half the amount of work spread over the whole year. 
In Harvard the student has an almost complete "freedom of 
election" among the hundreds of courses offered to him; and 
he receives his bachelor's degree on passing in a fixed number 
of courses ; so that it is theoretically possible for him to make 
the most incongruous combinations. But the inevitable limita- 
tions of the time-table impose some restrictions ; and, besides, 
undergraduates are very gregarious. The association for ad- 
ministrative purposes of the teachers of cognate subjects in 
"Divisions" and "Departments" (e.g. the Division of History 
and Political Science, which includes the Departments of 
History and Political Economy), would of itself suggest to the 
undergraduate that certain subjects are akin. There tends, there- 
fore, to grow up a certain loose grouping of the students around 
the subjects which mainly attract their attention ; approaching, 
though at a great distance, to the state of affairs produced at 
Oxford and Cambridge by the Schools and Triposes. At most 
other American universities there is far less freedom of selection 
among individual courses : the student has either to choose be- 
tween a certain number of combinations of subjects, and with each 
subject take certain allotted courses, or, in very old-fashioned 



g6 The Teaching of History in America. 

places, he pursues a common curriculum, with more or less 
recognition of the method of alternatives. But however large 
or small "the elective element" may be, the "course" is coming 
to be the real unit of work and examination. For the bachelor's 
degree there is nowhere, so far as I know, any examination 
covering the whole of a couple of years' work, like those for 
the Oxford Honour Schools or the Cambridge Triposes. It is 
the universal practice for the "instructor" "giving" a "course" 
himself to conduct the examination or examinations attached 
to it ; this is, perhaps, inevitable with so wide a range of 
"electives." When the number in a class is large, the instruc- 
tor is commonly enabled to appoint one or more assistants to 
help him with the reading of the papers; but there is no official 
position comparable to that of an "examiner" in an English 
university. The degree is conferred on the basis of the annual 
"returns" which the instructors give in to the university "office." 
Owing to the absence of outside examiners, and of any binding 
definition of what a course shall include, and also to the power 
of an instructor to modify his course year by year, the exami- 
nation is not so much on a subject at large as upon the 
particular course in the way in which it was conducted in a 
particular year. However naturally some topic fell within the 
scope of a course, a student would usually feel aggrieved if he 
were asked some question upon it which had not been dealt 
with by the lectures or by "reading" definitely recommended. 
What has been said of the prominence of the "course" will 
already have suggested the absence of any such tutorial system 
as has been elaborated at Oxford or as is beginning to make 
its appearance at Cambridge. There is no officer whose duty 
it is to supervise the whole of a student's work for a couple of 
years ; to so guide his reading and assign such topics for weekly 
essays that he shall cover the whole of a certain large field 
(comparable in amount, perhaps, to eight courses) within the 
allotted time; and to hear and criticise these essays week by 
week both as to form and content. In an American University 



The Teaching of History in America. 97 

the student is left much more to himself, both for good and 
for ill. The instructors are very ready to advise him as to the 
selection of courses; in some universities there are official 
"advisers" for freshmen. Moreover there is a certain amount 
of supervision and individual help provided in connection with 
the several courses. In large elementary classes, numbering a 
couple of hundred students or more, it is usual to introduce 
frequent "tests," in the shape of "hour examinations," and to 
employ the services of a staff of "assistants" who hold "confer- 
ences," with such students as do badly on such occasions. It 
is the business of these assistants to assign definite bits of 
reading, and to see that the tasks are accomplished, after a 
fashion. In the case of the smaller classes, the instructor may 
confine himself to set lectures, and be content with the mid- 
year and final annual examinations as tests of application and 
intelligence. Or he may, and often does, assign pieces of 
"written work," commonly called "theses," — perhaps as many 
as four in the course of the year, to each man. The quality of 
the performance, the amount of help given by the instructor, 
the thoroughness of the criticism, the extent of personal 
contact, differ with the nature of the course and the views 
and idiosyncrasies of the teacher. Speaking broadly, it may 
perhaps be said that the more intelligent and industrious 
students get about as much personal assistance, putting it all 
together, as they would in Oxford, while the lazy and stupid 
get a good deal less. The average American professor, it will 
be perceived, occupies a position midway between that of a 
German professor and that of an Oxford tutor. He sees more 
of the students than the former, less than the latter. But what- 
ever help he may extend to his students, it is almost all in 
connection with the particular courses he is "giving" that year. 
Of course I am now speaking of official duty, and not of the 
offices of friendship. 

The "course," conducted chiefly by way of lectures, being 
thus the pivot around which revolves the whole academic 
a. 7 



98 The Teaching of History in America. 

world, the character of the instruction it provides is of vital 
importance. Naturally this varies with the subject. In the 
elementary historical courses all that can be expected, or 
needed, is that the instructor should put before his hearers the 
salient points in the period, and should direct their attention 
to the "standard" writers who have dealt with it. But a very 
noticeable feature in almost all the instruction above the most 
elementary is the stress laid on the use of the original "sources." 
This is not limited to the seminary work, to be described later : 
in many of the ordinary courses the instructors insist that 
students shall actually themselves consult some of the accessible 
printed collections of documents or contemporary narrative. 
From the universities the enthusiasm for "sources" is now 
spreading to the teachers of American and English History in 
the secondary schools; and I am not sure that "the new 
method" is not in danger of being pushed to extremes. To 
put before a student a bit of contemporary narrative, with all its 
obvious bias and the unmistakeable colour of its time and place, 
and thus enable him, as it were, to watch history in the making, 
may give a new interest to the subject, and possibly awakervin 
a mind here and there the germs of a critical sense. But as 
soon as "source books" have come to be produced, with the 
"portions" of contemporaries served up ready for immediate 
consumption, it has to be very good teaching indeed which 
induces the student to go further and look at the passages in 
their context. No one who is acquainted with the Oxford 
History School will maintain that the use of the "Select Char- 
ters" has been an unmixed good. Still, whatever dangers may 
lurk in "source books" for the elite of the students, they 
evidently supply the average man with a valuable supplement 
to the mere text-book. 

The courses, it need hardly be said, range over the whole 
field of history. My impression is that both Ancient History and 
General Mediaeval History attract relatively few students, and 
are represented by a relatively small number of teachers. But 



The Teaching of History in America. 99 

Mediaeval English History secures a surprisingly large amount 
of attention on its constitutional side. The continuity of 
English and American institutional development is taken for 
granted ; and the great treatise of the Bishop of Oxford, sup- 
plemented by the writings of Professor Maitland and Mr Round, 
finds assiduous readers. Among courses on Modern History, 
those on America naturally attract most auditors. Their place 
in University life may be gathered from the following figures. 
In the year 1897-8 at Harvard, the general preliminary course 
on mediaeval and modern history, which most would-be 
students of history are obliged to take first, enrolled 439 
students. Among the courses dealing with particular periods, 
that on American History since 1783 stood at the top in 
respect of numbers, with 2103 European History since 1750 
and American History before 1783 ran one another close with 
171 and 169 respectively. Then came a great fall in numbers 
to English Constitutional History since 1760 with 107; and 
another great fall to Mediaeval English Constitutional History 
with 54, the History of the Eastern Question with 48, and 
England 1485 — 1688 with 44. In the ten other courses given 
that year the numbers ranged from 22 to 3. To show the 
large part played by American History, it must be added that 
among the courses given under the head of Political Economy 
was one on American Economic History which drew 94 
students; and that in the Historical Seminary out of 25 
students 17 worked at topics in American History. As a result 
alike of popular demand and of the awakening of a keen intel- 
lectual interest in the subject, the greater universities are 
finding it desirable to constitute two full professorships in 
American History, dividing the field most commonly at the 
year 1783. The whole movement is full of promise; it has 
found an organ in the American Historical Review, and the 
study of American History is evidently entering into the scien- 
tific stage. Already more than one popular notion as to the 
relations between the English of Britain and the English of 
L.ofC. 



ioo The Teaching of History in America. 

America in the 17 th and 18th centuries is being abandoned to 
ill-informed Americanophils on the eastern side of the Atlantic. 

The significance of the study of American History for the 
political life of the American people, especially at a time when 
it is assuming new responsibilities, is too obvious for comment. 
It is heightened by the fact that, side by side with the narrative 
courses, there are an increasing number of courses being 
established in the greater universities which are devoted to the 
comparative study of political institutions. At Harvard these 
are grouped together under the heading "Government," and 
are included within the Department of History; elsewhere 
they are differently designated and grouped; but the general 
result is much the same. They everywhere form a useful 
supplement to the "purely historical" courses; and in most 
cases they are quite concrete and "inductive" in their method. 
The more advanced courses, — such as that which at Harvard 
brings together a score of graduate and senior students, after 
an adequate preliminary preparation, to compare the working 
of the present political mechanism of England, France, 
Germany, and the United States, — constitute schools of 
Politics in the truest sense. 

Next to the organization of the courses, the most striking 
feature in the American academic system is to be found in the 
Graduate Schools, which, under various names and varying 
organization, have grown up in all the larger universities. 
That at Harvard, for instance, numbers some 300 men; of 
whom about one-third are ordinary B.A.s of Harvard, and 
of the rest the great majority B.A.s of some other college of 
good standing (perhaps a fifth of them having also spent a year 
or two as undergraduates at Harvard, and added the Harvard 
degree to their earlier one). Out of the 300, perhaps every 
sixth or seventh pursues studies which lie chiefly in the realm 
of History and Political Science. After being accepted by 
the Committee on Admission from other colleges as "equal 
to a Harvard B.A." or having performed, if necessary, an 



The Teaching of History in America. 101 

assigned amount of work to bring them up to that standard, 
a student in the Graduate School may become a candidate for 
the degree of M.A., which is conferred only after passing satis- 
factorily in four courses of a certain grade. Or, if he can 
afford to stay two or three years, he may aspire to the degree 
of Ph.D. The doctorate is now coming to be the necessary 
avenue to any employment as an instructor in an American 
university; and it is aimed at by all the more ambitious 
members of the Graduate School. Accordingly the greater 
universities are all realising the need of jealously safeguarding 
its quality; and in the year 1898 it was secured in Harvard 
by 26 persons alone, of whom 3 were historians. 

The conditions of the doctorate differ widely from place 
to place. In Harvard they are (1) a good preliminary educa- 
tion, (2) a fair knowledge of a certain general field, put 
together from a wide range of choice allowed by an official 
programme, (3) a more intimate knowledge of a special field, 
e.g. American Colonial History, or the Mediaeval Constitutional 
History of England, and (4) a dissertation based on the 
original investigation of some subject falling within the special 
field. More weight has come to be attached of late years to 
general culture, and to an intelligent appreciation of the signifi- 
cance of the larger movements of History : students allowed to 
give an almost exclusive attention to their special field and 
the preparation of their dissertation were already beginning to 
display the unfortunate results of excessive and premature 
specialisation. It is especially necessary to utilize the exami- 
nation for the doctorate to secure a due correlation of studies, 
under a system of freedom of election and of examination for 
the B.A. degree on the single course. 

The work of research carried on by the graduate student 
with a view to his doctoral dissertation finds its point of 
contact with the general academic life in the organization of 
the Seminary. Having chosen his subject the student is placed 
under the oversight of that one of the professors whose intel- 



102 The Teaching of History in America. 

lectual interests it most nearly touches, and from time to time 
takes counsel with him. The seminary, a fortnightly meeting, 
presided over by a professor, of graduate students (with occa- 
sional "seniors," i.e. 4th year undergraduates) all engaged in 
similar labours, is occupied with the reading or oral exposition 
of their "results." Its chief value lies in the salutary pressure 
which it brings to bear on the students to take stock once or 
twice a year of the progress of their investigations, to dis- 
entangle their conclusions and put them into shape, and so 
escape the danger of being overwhelmed by their accumulated 
data. A subsidiary purpose is to afford the other members of 
the seminary an object-lesson of what to do and what to avoid 
in the presentation of their material. 

When the seminary was imported from Germany some 
twenty years ago, somewhat exaggerated expectations were 
entertained of its efficiency in stimulating intellectual activity. 
It was pictured as a group of ardent fellow-workers coopera- 
tively engaged, though with a certain division of labour, in the 
pursuit of historic truth. In some places a particular room or 
even a suite of rooms was set apart for the seminary. Here they 
could hold their meetings, and here, with a special collection 
of sources and authorities at their elbow, they could pursue their 
labours apart from the vulgar mass of undergraduates. But 
several causes have rendered it difficult to carry out this ideal. 
It is not easy to find a subject for investigation which is 
capable of being broken up into a group of topics independent 
enough to satisfy the student's craving for a subject of his own, 
and connected enough to furnish a common interest. Even 
when this can be done one year, the mere fact that students are 
often engaged two or even three years upon their dissertation, 
would make it impossible to create a common interest every 
year. Accordingly, it must be confessed that most of the 
members of a seminary, having no special knowledge of 
the subject assigned to a particular afternoon, take only a 
languid interest in what is set before them, and contribute 



T/te Teaching of History in America. 103 

little in the way of discussion; while the professor who presides 
soon exhausts the generalities which occur to him. In con- 
sequence, the enthusiasm for "the seminary method" is evi- 
dently lessening; and in some quarters there are visible 
tendencies towards disintegration. There is the less need for 
regret, because the advanced courses, which are provided in 
much greater abundance in the larger American universities 
than in Germany, satisfy to some extent the same purpose as 
the Seminar was designed to accomplish, i.e. the promotion of 
original investigation. Still the introduction of the seminary 
marked a stage in the approach to the higher ideals of a 
university; and it still forms a useful part of the academic 
machinery. 

The conditions of the doctorate, if they can be main- 
tained, — and there seems no reason for alarm in this regard, so 
far as the greater institutions are concerned — provide a very 
effective stimulus towards research. But a certain influence in 
the same direction has already been exercised, — and this 
influence will probably grow, — by the markedly hierarchical 
organization of the teaching body. A graduate student of 
distinct ability, even before he has secured his Ph.D., can 
usually add considerably to his income and gain valuable 
experience, by acting for a year or so as "assistant" in a 
course, — conducting conferences, reading examination papers, 
and generally making himself useful at the instructor's behest. 
Thus at Harvard in 1897-8 eight such assistants were em- 
ployed in the teaching of History and Government. Having 
taken the doctorate, such a man, if there happens to be room 
for him, may be engaged as an "Instructor" on a yearly tenure. 
The term "instructor," it must be explained, is used in 
Harvard in two senses : for every teacher in independent 
charge of a course, including the Professors; and also for the 
lowest grade of appointment to an independent charge. If he 
succeeds, the "Instructor" (in this latter sense) may be given 
an appointment for three years with the same title but with 



104 The Teaching of History in America. 

a seat in the " Faculty," which discusses all questions of 
curriculum and graduation. The next stages are appointment 
as Assistant-Professor for five years ; a second appointment for 
the same term with a higher salary; and finally appointment as 
full Professor "without limit of term." It needs no saying that 
this process is often greatly shortened, that instructors some- 
times go elsewhere and are recalled to higher positions, and 
that professors are introduced from outside. But in no case 
are vacancies advertised and testimonials invited : American 
scholars, like Scotch divines or German professors, have to 
wait for a "call." In "extending" such "a call," or in grant- 
ing promotion, the governing bodies are necessarily influenced 
by a number of considerations \ but one of the weightiest of 
these considerations is always the printed work of the available 
men. In the bustling atmosphere of America the young 
assistant or instructor is so likely to become immersed in the 
details of examination and administration, that any circum- 
stance is to be valued which reminds him that to save a little 
time for a piece of independent investigation may after all be 
his most prudent policy. 

So far as the function of a university in the extension of 
knowledge is concerned, the academic situation is full of 
promise. The chief source of anxiety is the condition of 
general culture. But this is mainly a matter for the schools ; 
and of them the present writer is not competent to speak. 



CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY J. & C. F. CLAY, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 



-A<". 



MAR 5 1902 



